On the other hand, she’d never lost anyone the way this girl had just lost Finn, or been tuned to anyone the way Leila and Finn had been. The impulse to smile passed. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “You have a reason to weep. Will it help to hear that time does make it easier?”

As if she had scarcely heard, the girl murmured, “At midwinter full of moon, half a year from now, they will ask me if I wish to be consecrated to these robes. I will accept. I will never love another man.”

She was only a child, but in the voice Jennifer heard a profound resolution.

It moved her. “You are very young,” she said. “Do not let grief turn you so quickly away from love.”

The girl looked up at that. “And who are you to talk?” Leila said.

“That is unfair,” said Jennifer after a shocked silence.

The tears were glistening on Leila’s cheeks. “Maybe,” she said. “But how often have you loved, yourself? Have you not waited all your days for him? And now that Arthur is here you are afraid.”

She had been Guinevere and was capable of dealing with this. There was too much color in anger, so she said gently, “Is this how it seems to you?”

Leila hadn’t expected that tone. “Yes,” she said, but not defiantly.

“You are a wise child,” said Jennifer, “and perhaps not only a child. You are not wholly wrong, but you must not presume to judge me, Leila. There are greater griefs and lesser, and I am trying to find the lesser.”

“Lesser grief,” Leila repeated. “Where is joy?”

“Not here,” said Jennifer.

“But why?” It was a hurt child asking.

She surprised herself by answering, “Because I broke him once, long ago. And because I was broken here last spring. He is condemned to joylessness and war, and I cannot cross, Leila. Even if I did, I would smash him in the end. I always do.”

“Must it be repeated?”

“Over and over,” she said. The long tale. “Until he is granted release.”

“Then grant it,” said Leila simply. “How shall he be redeemed if not in pain? What else will ever do it? Grant him release.”

And with that, all the old sorrow seemed to have come back after all. She could not stay it. There was brightly colored pain in all the hues of guilt and grief, and colored, also, was the memory of love, love and desire, and—

“It is not mine to grant!” she cried. “I loved them both!”

It echoed. They were near to the dome and the sound reverberated. Leila’s eyes opened very wide. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry!” And she ran forward to bury her head against Jennifer’s breast, having voyaged into deeper seas than she knew.