Ben shifted uneasily. "It happens," he said carefully. "We discuss it and usually, unless there's a good reason, a shortage of equipment, or supplies, something like that, whoever has the idea goes ahead with it."

Now the cloud had freed the moon; the light seemed brighter after the brief darkness. "What if the others didn't see the value of the idea?" Molly asked.

"Then it would have no value, and no one would want to waste time on it."

"But what if it was something you couldn't explain exactly, something you couldn't put into words?"

"What is the real question, Molly?" Ben asked, turning to face her. Her face was as pale as the moon, with deep shadows for eyes, her mouth black, not smiling. She looked up at him, and the moon was reflected in her eyes, and she seemed somehow luminous, as if the light came from within her, and he realized that Molly was beautiful. He never had seen it before and now it shocked him that the thought formed, forced itself on him.

Molly stood up suddenly. "I'll show you," she said. "In my room."

They walked back to the hospital side by side, not touching, and Ben thought: of course, the Miriam sisters were all beautiful, most of the sisters were. Just as most of the brothers were handsome. It was a given. And it was meaningless.

She pulled a blind down on the window in her little room and threw her cloak on the chair behind her worktable. Then she pulled out drawings, sorting through them. Finally she handed one to him.

It was a woman, no one he knew, but vaguely familiar. Sara, he realized; changed, but Sara. Beside her, mirrors reached into infinity, and in each mirror was another woman, each Sara, but none exactly like her. Here a scowl tightened the mouth, there a wide smile, another was laughing, another had graying hair, wrinkles… He looked at Molly in bewilderment.

She handed him another drawing. There was a tree, nothing more. A tree rising out of a solid rock. An impossible thing and he felt unsettled by it.

Another drawing. She thrust it at him. A tiny boat on a vast sea that filled the paper from margin to margin. There was a solitary figure in the boat, so small it was insignificant, impossible to identify.

He felt upset by the drawings. He looked at Molly on the other side of the drawing table; she was staring at him intently. She looked feverish, her cheeks flushed, her eyes too bright.

"I need help, Ben," she said, her voice low and compelling. "You have to help me."

"What?"

"Ben, I have to do those things in paints. I don't know why, but I have to. And others. It won't work with pencil, or pen and ink. I need color and light! Please!"