It took almost half an hour for the little party to climb to the top of the cliff. As they approached, the Father General stepped back into the shadows, waiting to speak until they were near enough to be startled by the soft and unexpected words.

"Really, Emilio," Vincenzo Giuliani said in a dry, bored voice, "why not stumble again, in case someone has missed the symbolism? I'm sure Brother Edward has been meditating on Golgotha all the way up, but Father Candotti is a practical man and may have been distracted by the fact that he's long overdue for breakfast." He saw, without unseemly satisfaction, the fresh anger he had provoked and he continued in the same light, ironic tone. "I'll see you in my office in fifteen minutes. And get cleaned up. The carpets in that room are quite valuable. It would be a pity to bleed all over them."

The man ushered into Giuliani's office twenty minutes later had indeed been cleaned up, Giuliani observed, but he had not eaten since vomiting the previous evening and had not slept at all, after an exhausting trip out of the city. Sandoz looked waxen, the skin beneath his eyes purplish. And he had put himself through a hellish ordeal this morning. Good, Giuliani thought.

He did not invite Sandoz to sit but rather left him standing in the center of the room. Giuliani sat motionless behind the vast desk, outlined by the light from the window at his back, his face unreadable. Aside from the ticking of an ancient clock, there was no sound. When the Father General finally spoke, his voice was quiet and mild.

"There is no form of death or violence that Jesuit missionaries have not met. Jesuits have been hanged, drawn and quartered in London," he said quietly. "Disemboweled in Ethiopia. Burned alive by the Iroquois. Poisoned in Germany, crucified in Thailand. Starved to death in Argentina, beheaded in Japan, drowned in Madagascar, gunned down in El Salvador." He stood and began to circle the room slowly, an old habit from his days as a history professor, but stopped for a moment by the bookcase to select an old volume, which he turned idly over and over in his hands as he spoke, strolling again, placing no special emphasis on any of his words. "We have been terrorized and intimidated. We have been reviled, falsely accused, imprisoned for life. We have been beaten. Maimed. Sodomized. Tortured. And broken."

He came to rest now in front of Sandoz, close enough to see the man's eyes glittering. There was no change in Emilio's face but the tremor was visible. "And we, who are vowed to chastity and obedience," he said very softly, holding Emilio's eyes with his own, "have made decisions, alone and unsupported, that have given scandal and ended in tragedy. Alone, we have made horrifying mistakes that would never have occurred in a community."

He had expected the shock of recognition, the look that comes when the truth is spoken. For a moment, Giuliani wondered if he had misjudged. But he saw shame, he was certain, and despair.

"Did you think you were the only one? Is it possible that you are so arrogant?" he asked, in tones of wonderment. Sandoz was blinking rapidly now. "Did you think you were the only one ever to wonder if what we do is worth the price we pay? Did you honestly believe that you alone, of all those who have gone, were the single man to lose God? Do you think we would have a name for the sin of despair, if only you had experienced it?"

Give the man credit for courage. He did not look away. Giuliani changed tactics. He sat down at the desk once more and picked up a notescreen. "The last report I received on your health tells me that you are not as sick as you seem. What was the term the physician used? 'A psychogenic somatic retraction. I do hate jargon. I suppose he means you are depressed. I would put it more bluntly. I think you are wallowing in self-pity."

Emilio's head snapped up, face carved in wet stone.

For an instant, Sandoz looked like a bewildered child, slapped for weeping. It was so brief, so out of expectation, that it almost didn't register. Months later, and for the rest of his life, Vincenzo Giuliani would remember that instant.

"I, for one, am tired of it," the Father General continued matter-of-factly, sitting back in his chair and contemplating Sandoz like a master of novices. How strange, to be both a year younger and decades older than this man. He tossed the notescreen aside and straightened, hands folded on the desk in front of him, a judge about to pass sentence. "If you treated anyone else as you have treated yourself during the past six hours, you would be guilty of assault," he told Sandoz flatly. "This will cease. From this moment on, you will show your body the respect it deserves as God's creation. You will allow your arms to heal and then you will embark on a sensible and moderate course of physical therapy. You will eat regularly. You will rest properly. You will care for your own body as you would for that of a friend to whom you are indebted. In two months' time, you will appear before me and we will examine in detail the history of the mission upon which you were sent," Giuliani said, his voice hardening suddenly as he pronounced each word separately, "by your superiors."

And then, mercifully, Vincenzo Giuliani, Father General of the Society of Jesus, took back the awful burden that belonged to him and his predecessors by right. "During these months and for all time," he told Sandoz, "you will cease to arrogate to yourself responsibility that lies elsewhere. Is that clear?"

There was a long moment, but Emilio nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Good." Giuliani rose quietly and went to the door of his office. He opened it and was not surprised to see Brother Edward waiting, his anxiety plain. Candotti was seated a little way down the hall, hunched over, hands together between his knees, tense and tired.

"Brother Edward," the Father General said pleasantly, "Father Sandoz will be having some breakfast now. Perhaps you and Father Candotti would like to join him in the refectory."

Looking back on what happened that warm August night, Anne Edwards always wished she'd dug out horoscopes for everyone at the dinner. It would have been an excellent test of astrology, she thought. Somewhere, under someone's sign, there should have been a warning: "Brace yourself. Everything changes tonight. Everything."

Emilio, when she asked him over for dinner on Saturday, had suggested with telling casualness that George might invite Jimmy Quinn and Sofia Mendes as well. Sure, Anne agreed, putting misgivings aside. The more, the merrier.

Emilio had not seen Sofia since Cleveland, and it was beginning to seem as though he was deliberately avoiding her, which was probably uncomfortably close to the truth. Well, Anne knew what it took to convert attraction to valued friendship and believed Emilio capable of it; she was willing to provide neutral ground for the task. And Sofia? An emotional anorexic, Anne diagnosed privately. That, perhaps, along with her beauty, was what drew men. Jimmy had long since confessed to his infatuation, unaware that Sofia'd had a similar effect on Emilio. And George, for that matter. And I'm in no position to complain, she thought. My God, all this misplaced sexual heat! The house is going to be flooded with pheromones tonight.

So, she decided, locking up the clinic on Saturday afternoon, my job is to make the evening feel like a family gathering, make the kids feel like cousins, maybe. Above all, she understood, it was necessary to avoid treating Emilio and Sofia, or even Jimmy and Sofia, as a couple. Keep it fun, she told herself firmly, and then keep out of it.