To my surprise it was Sam who answered. "Emily Baines Comstock is as fine a woman as you'll ever meet," he declared, "and perhaps you will meet her, someday. She's exactly the kind of woman a man like Bryce Comstock deserved to have at his side, and she loved him dearly, and was inconsolable for a long time after his death. Emily's more than just beautiful-she's clever and resourceful." And here he reddened, and cleared his throat.

"Does she live in the Executive Palace?" I asked.

"There's a cottage reserved for her on the Palace grounds," said Sam, "but she keeps a row-house in Manhattan where she prefers to stay. Emily doesn't care for the rivalries and jealousies of the high-born. She's happier with artists, actors, scholars-that type of person, from whom she has little to fear."

"My mother's a cultured woman," Julian added, "and doesn't care to be in the presence of Deklan Conqueror, who is as ignorant as he is villainous."

That was how Julian had come to be raised in Manhattan, which was where he had seen so many plays and movies, and spoken with Philosophers, and picked up his heretical ideas. "But you must have met your uncle face-to-face," I said.

"Too often. After my father's death it was all I could do to restrain myself from calling him a murderer. Oh, those holiday dinners at the Executive Palace! You have no idea, Adam. My mother and I pressed in with Deklan and his crowd of sycophants, while the craven agents of the Dominion blessed his every whim and impulse. We were on display, I think-Deklan's way of announcing that he could command the loyalty even of his murdered brother's widow and son. We were powerless against him. He could have snuffed us out at any time. He tolerated my mother because she was a woman, and me because I was a child, and both of us because we were a perverse emblem of his supposed generosity."

I had touched a hostility that ran deep in Julian, and the edge in his voice was impossible to ignore. The way he spoke of those Palace dinners, and the clergy who presided at them, made me wonder if this humiliation might be the ultimate source of his apostasy. But such speculation was not useful, and I dropped the subject because it made Julian so conspicuously unhappy.

"There!" Sam said. "Do you hear that?"

It was the sound of a train whistle wind-borne over the thawing prairie-not the Caribou-Horn Train that had brought us here from Bad Jump but an Army train, which we would board first thing in the morning, and which would carry us to the battle-front in the East.

"Pack away those Comstock dollars," Sam said, "or you'll have nothing to spend on women and liquor by the time we get to Montreal."

I blushed at his joke, and tried to laugh, though there was more truth in it, ultimately, than I like to admit.

* One of the men was clearly tubercular, while two others showed evidence of active Pox about their wrists and throats. Five more were turned back simply because they had lost a great number of teeth, or their teeth were too loose in the jaw to be useful. A toothless man could not bite or chew Army hardtack, and such men had been known to starve to death on a long march.

* The Oath, though we swore to it under a sort of compulsion, was not meaningless to me. I held those Institutions of Liberty in awe, and I had been feeling guilty about my draft-dodging, necessary though it seemed at the time. By swearing fealty I felt washed clean-despite the bug powder clinging to my mortal fraction.

* Airier justifications were sometimes cited, including the theorized ancient landing of Vikings on the eastern shores of North America; but Julian assayed the tolerance of his listeners, and confined his argument to the most pertinent points.

Even this thumbnail sketch of history taxed the geographical understanding of his auditors, and Julian was reduced to scratching maps in the dirt with the point of his bayonet.

* Described in the novel The Boys of '60 by Mr. Charles Curtis Easton.

* Coincidentally-or so the textbooks say.

See Mr. Easton's Against the Brazilians.

* President of the United States.

2.

The social atmosphere aboard the troop train to Montreal differed in instructive ways from that aboard the Phantom Car. Months had passed since we left Bad Jump, and those of us who had been strangers then had since become, if not friends, at least confederates-intimately known to one another, for better or worse. If we were afraid of the war to which we were being delivered, we kept that tender feeling to ourselves. We sang a great deal, to maintain high spirits, and I was not the prude and child I once had been, and I joined in on the less obscene choruses of Those Two-Dollar Shoes Hurt My Feet. Not because vulgarity had become especially desirable, but because merriment is an antidote to dread.

I noticed, too, how the soldiers often appealed to "Julian Commongold" for an opinion or a verdict in some dispute, and accepted his judgment as settled law. This despite Julian's evident youth, unsuccessfully disguised by his sparse yellow beard. It was as if he carried around with him an invisible but perceptible aura of authority, which perhaps was what Sam had called "the Comstock in him." It manifested in his square-set shoulders, his careful grooming, and the easy way he wore the blue-and-yellow uniform of the Infantry. But it was a comradely authority, too, coexistent with his confident sense of himself and the evident pleasure he took in socializing even with those beneath his original station in life. He smiled often, and it was a smile only the most truculent among us could fail to give back.

The train carried us out of the prairie and into a land of forest and lakes. Rain beat down steadily most of the day, but it made no difference to us, for we were inside a fully-equipped passenger car, with protection from the weather. This was train travel as I had always imagined it. I sat at a window watching raindrops glide sideways as we passed in and out of cavernous pine forests and followed the smoky shore of a great gray lake. To the pagans of ancient Rome, Julian once told me, the Easter season had represented Death and Rebirth. Certainly there was no lack of Rebirth in the countryside through which we passed. Ferns unrolled in shady glens, the sodden limbs of trees were budding afresh, and cattails poked through ponded winter marshes. And there was Death, too, if you looked for it, in the occasional ruins we passed-not just old settled basements, as in Lundsford, but whole stone buildings, mossy-green, and once or twice the remains of entire towns, slouching brick boxes that shed raindrops as we rattled past them at thirty miles to the hour. Crows nested in those old buildings, and their eaves were crowned with chalky dung, and the only visitors were the local deer, or an occasional wolf or bear, as might be.

I gazed on many more such overgrown ruins until night fell. It was wholly dark when we approached the outskirts of Montreal, where campfires smoldered in the rainy distance. We heard an occasional growl of thunder (or perhaps it was cannonade), and it was at this point that the singing stopped, and a wary silence replaced it, and we fell into less pleasant reveries about the future and what it might hold for us.

An entire Regiment of draftees had been packed into the train-a big body of men, but it was nothing compared to the great Army assembled by General Galligasken outside of the City of Montreal. Our company was, in the common phrase, "a drop in the bucket"-and it was a large, ungainly bucket, uninterested in welcoming new drips. As soon as we collected our gear and left the train we were conducted to a muddy field in which we were invited to make our own contribution to a sea of tents-nothing but mud and canvas as far (in the rain and the night) as the eye could see. After much flailing about, during which we repeatedly slipped and stumbled in the glutinous muck, and cursed, and were cursed in turn by the soldiers trying to sleep in adjoining quarters, we had erected our own rough sleeping-places, and we tumbled into them fully-dressed, and woke a few hours later when reveille sounded, our uniforms all scabbed with mud.

I could not help looking about curiously as we formed up in companies for roll call. The rain had ceased during the night. The morning was brisk and bright, and high clouds careened across the sky like runaway melon-carts. Everywhere, in every direction, men were being bugled out of bed and mustered up, and regimental flags popped in the breeze with a sound like knots bursting in a pinewood fire. The vast flat field in which we stood was cross-cut with muddy roads, and already horses and mules crowded these paths, straining to pull provision wagons or caissons; and I discerned in the distance the grander tents of regimental and battalion commanders. Otherwise there was nothing but an ocean of soldiers on all sides-infantry, cavalry, artillery. The nearest thing I could see that was not a part of the Army of the Laurentians was a line of low trees, as far away as a cloud seems when it sits upon the horizon.

"Is this Montreal?" I asked Sam. If so, the city was considerably less grand than I had imagined it, though still very large.

"Don't be idiotic," Sam said. "The City of Montreal is some miles distant, most of it on an island in the St. Lawrence River. Do you think they would muster so many men in the midst of a modern city? Half of them would be drunk by noon, if that was the case-the other half having absconded to the whore houses. And don't blush like that, Adam: you're a soldier now, you ought to be hardened to such things."*

It has been said, I forget by whom, that you can't throw a stone in the City of Montreal without hitting either a church or a whore house. I would soon enough find out for myself the truth of that statement, for it was announced at noon mess that our regiment was to be allowed a supervised leave, and we would be escorted to the city for Easter services in one of the grand ancient Dominion churches there.

"Do Jews celebrate Easter?" I asked Sam as we marched to the outskirts of Montreal. "I don't suppose they do."

"It would be surprising if they did," Sam agreed, "though we have our own holiday about this time of year, which is called Pass-Over."

"What event does it mark, if not the Crucifixion and Resurrection?"

"The fact that the Jews were exempted from the plagues that fell upon Egypt."

"Well," I said, "that's something to be grateful for," recalling my Bible studies under Ben Kreel. "Those were unpleasant plagues, and not to be taken lightly."

"More than unpleasant," Julian chimed in, and I was glad that the sound of tramping feet, though muffled by the damp ground, was loud enough to prevent anyone eavesdropping while Julian dilated on this delicate subject. "Inventive, I would say, almost to the point of madness. Insects-boils-the butchery of children-such work by any other agency would be considered an example of unexcelled sadism rather than celestial justice."

I was quietly shocked (though hardly surprised) by this fresh apostasy. "God is jealous by nature, Julian," I reminded him. "It says so in the text."

"Oh yes," Julian agreed, "jealous, certainly, but also forgiving; merciful, but vengeful; wrathful, but loving-in fact just about anything we can imagine Him to be. That's the Paradox of Monotheism, as I call it. Contrast a Christian with a nature-worshipping pagan: if the pagan's cornfield is ravaged by a wind-storm he can blame the bad manners of the Cyclone-God; and if the weather is kind he addresses his thanks to Mother Sunshine, or some such; and all this, though not sensible, has a kind of rude logic to it. But with the invention of monotheism a single Deity is forced to take responsibility for every contradictory joy and tragedy that comes down the turnpike. He is obliged to be the God of the hurricane and the gentle breeze together, present in every act of love or violence, in every welcome birth or untimely death."

"I could do with a little less Mother Sunshine at the moment," remarked Sam, applying a handkerchief to his brow, for the day had grown warm, and the march was tiring.

"But you can't blame the Jews for celebrating their exemption from His wrath," I protested.

"No," Julian said, "no more than I can blame the sole survivor of a train wreck for crying out a heartfelt, 'Thank God I was allowed to live!'-though the same God who spared him must therefore have abstained from preventing the wreck, or rescuing any other person from it. The impulse to gratitude on the part of the survivor is understandable, but shortsighted."

"I don't see how monotheism makes it any worse, though. It seems to me, once you start multiplying your gods, you might not know just where to stop. A crowd of gods so numerous you can't recognize most of them seems hardly better than no god at all. Especially once they begin to bicker among themselves. Don't you often tell me to seek out the simplest explanation for a thing?"

"One is a simpler number than a dozen," Julian admitted. "But none is simpler than one."

"That's enough of this, thank you," said Sam.

"Why Sam," said Julian, grinning mischievously, "are you afraid of a little Philosophical Conversation?"

"This is Theology, not Philosophy-an altogether more dangerous subject, Julian; and I'm not so much afraid of the loose talk as I am of the loose tongue behind it."

"Where is the Dominion that we should censor ourselves?"

"Where is the Dominion? The Dominion is everywhere-you know that! The Dominion is at the head of this very march," referring to our newly-installed Dominion Officer, one Major Lampret, who strode before us, a handsome man in a handsome uniform.*

Julian might have insisted on continuing the conversation, if only for the purpose of aggravating Sam, but by this time we had come upon a great iron bridge, by which we crossed a body of water so immense that I could hardly credit its christening as a River. Vessels from many nations moved beneath that bridge, some with immense white sails and some powered by boilers, some warping toward the Port of Montreal and others bound for the inland Great Lakes trade or for the wide ocean far to the east; and beyond this bridge lay the astonishing City of Montreal, and it was the City that finally drew all of our attention-all of mine, at least.

I would see bigger cities in my life, and travel farther from home; but as Montreal was the first true City I had seen I could not help but contrast it with Williams Ford. By that measure, it was immense. And it had once been even larger, Julian reminded me, for we had all morning passed through a landscape that was essentially one vast Tip, played-out and burned-over, with scrub brush and low trees overlying what must once have been zones of industry or sprawling suburbs. What remained was only the core of the city as it was known to the Secular Ancients, all its rind and peelings having been stripped away.

But that central core preserved many wonderful antique structures. "The buildings are so tall!" I could not help exclaiming, and Julian said, "Though once much taller. Even these buildings have been scavenged, Adam." He drew my attention from the stark concrete walls, complexly chambered, to the crude peaked roofs above them with their fluted red-clay tiles and slumping chimneys: "You see how the roof is less sturdy than the building under it, though considerably newer? There's nothing much over four or five stories tall here (yes, yes, 'tall enough,' and stop gawking, Adam, you'll embarrass yourself), but some of these buildings were once almost ten times higher, the greater part of them having been taken down by inches for their wood, wire, and aluminum. Even their steel frames were eventually whittled down and sent to the re-rolling mills, leaving only the subdivided stumps for people to inhabit. If you think this city is magnificent, Adam, conjure up in your mind's eye the city it once was. Run the decades back and you'd see marvels of steel and glass-man-made mountains-a city halfway to infiltrating the sky itself. New York City is the same," he added with evident pride, "only larger."

I was not daunted by his comparisons, however, for modern-day Montreal seemed quite astonishing enough, with its bricked or cobbled streets and busy occupants. Let Julian dwell on the glories of the past-there was enough here to occupy the inquisitive mind.

The people were almost as surprising as the city in which they resided. Because we marched in a unit our regiment made a kind of martial parade, and the inhabitants of the city stood back (not always graciously) to accommodate our passage, while horses and wagons took alternative routes at the sound of our approach. The women of the city wore colorful clothes, dyed all the colors of the rainbow, and seemed both aloof and alluring as they strolled through the vernal sunshine and passed in and out of the innumerable shops and markets. The men dressed more conservatively-more peahen than peacock-but their trousers and shirts and coats were clean and pressed. Even the children were well-dressed, and only a few of them went barefoot. I asked Julian, "Are these folks Aristos?"

"Some, but mostly not. The eastern cities are not Estates, with a tightly-controlled leasing class. The business of the city requires artisans and laborers to be able to move freely between various jobs, and managers and petty owners can negotiate loans and establish factories or shops as they please, and profit from them. The cumulative effect is a population some of whom are prosperous enough to dress extravagantly-at least at Easter-even though they aren't propertied in the full sense of that word."

"Hasn't the war harmed the city?"

"It's been a mixed blessing, I gather. In the recent past the city has been exclusively in American hands, and the presence of garrisoned troops has created an economic boom, along with a bumper crop of larceny and vice. Look there, Adam, that should impress you-I believe that's the cathedral in which we're supposed to worship."

After this sarcastic comment I could not admit how astonished I truly was, though Julian laughed once more at my gawking. We had come up a low rise and around a corner into the neighborhood of a huge church. It was the largest I had ever seen-not the largest church but the largest thing I had ever seen, meaning a man-made thing and not an act of nature.* Its spires were tall enough to snag clouds, and I could hardly catch my breath as we marched under its shadow and through the enormous and ornate wooden doors. We paused in the dimness of the foyer, under the direction of Major Lampret, and took off our caps and stuffed them in our pockets, out of respect. Then we passed through a second set of doors into the body of the "cathedral," as Julian called it, which was like the Dominion Hall back in Williams Ford, if the Dominion Hall had been inflated to monstrous size, its modest walls exchanged for vaulted granite, and its woodwork shaped and polished by an army of imaginative and slightly mad carpenters. Everywhere, in every direction, was filigree, down to the finest scale, and alcoves and cubbies in which more filigree was on display, and candles more numerous than stars in the sky, creating a miasmic odor of smoky wax, and above all this were several great Stained Glass Windows, as tall as the pines of Athabaska, illustrating ecclesiastical themes, and of sun-shot colors so radiant as to seem Edenic.

There was some awed commentary among the troops, few of whom had ever been inside a Cathedral, and several of the men hooted loudly in order to hear their voices come echoing back from the high arched ceiling, until Major Lampret cuffed them into a respectful silence. Then we took our places in the pews.

"Does it gall you," I whispered to Sam, "to be in such a place for a Christian religious service?"

"I was raised by Christians after the death of my true parents," he reminded me, "and I've been inside many churches on many Easters, and on other occasions too, and I try to conduct myself as a well-mannered guest, if not a genuine devotee. Now be quiet, Adam Hazzard, and listen to the singing."

As it happened, we were stationed near the choir. At first the choir seemed only a vague crowd dressed all in white. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I realized the choristers were female, and most of them young, and I am ashamed to say that I was pleased by that discovery, for the city women possessed a beauty just as striking (it seemed to me right then) as all the stained glass saints and marble martyrs in Christendom.

Skeptics will put that down to the deprivations of Army life-and there is, of course, some truth to that-but I am convinced there was also an element of Destiny in my fascination, for standing in the front rank of the choir was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

I won't attempt to set down here the emotions this anonymous woman stirred in me, for the superlatives would embarrass the mature writer. Summoning all my powers of objectivity, then, this is what I saw: a short female person of approximately my own age, in a cloud-white surplice, her body what some might call stout and others would call healthy; with a pink and radiant face, and large eyes whose color I could not at this distance discern, although I imagined them (correctly, as it turned out) to be a handsome chestnut-brown; and a crown of hair that coiled like a vast collation of ebony springs, the light behind her making a spectacular Halo of it. If she noticed me staring at her, she showed no sign.

I could not distinguish her voice from the voices of the other female choristers, but I was sure it was at least as pure and angelic as the rest. They sang a hymn that was unfamiliar to me, with references to the Fortress of Virtue, the Armory of Faith, and other metaphorical architecture. Then-unhappily, for I was transported by the sound-the singing stopped, and Major Lampret himself stepped up to the pulpit. All eyes were suddenly on him, including those of the choir, and I found myself resenting the trim figure he cut in his Dominion uniform, its angel-wing breast pin glinting in the multicolored light.

Major Lampret, employing his parade-ground voice so as to reach the back pews, explained that the Cathedral, though nominally a Catholic church, had agreed to allow its premises to be used for nondenominational Christian services, Dominion-contrived and Dominion-approved, for the spiritual benefit of such divisions as the Army could spare from duty at the front. He thanked the local clergy for their generosity; then he admonished us all to keep silent, and refrain from eating any food we might have concealed about ourselves, and not to interrupt the service with cries of "That's so!" or "Go on!" or other vulgar ejaculations, nor to clap and whistle at the end of the sermon, but rather to sit tight and think of Redemption.

Then a local clergyman-a priest, I suppose, for Catholic clergy are so called-mounted the podium and began to read the sermon that had been prepared for him by the Dominion scholars. The lesson bid fair to be a long one-it began with palm leaves, and promised a leisurely route to the Resurrection (which for me was the highlight of the story, for I had always enjoyed picturing the astonishment of observers at the discovery of the Empty Tomb)-and the clergyman had mastered that peculiar ecclesiastical drone which, in combination with the heat, and the fatigue of the march, and the smoky air, caused more than a few nodding heads among his temporary parishioners. Julian, sitting next to me, seemed deeply attentive, but I knew better than to believe the appearance, for Julian had once told me what he did during church services (an Atheist being as much a foreigner in church as a Jew): he passed the time, he said, by imagining the movie he would one day make, The Life and Adventures of the Great Naturalist Charles Darwin, rehearsing in his mind the individual scenes, and the dialogue, and how he might decorate the sets, or work out the plot for maximum drama.

I fought off my own drowsiness by occasionally glancing back at the choir, where the woman who had captivated me stood patiently. She betrayed no boredom with the sermon, though she occasionally cast a glance heavenward, more in exasperation (it seemed) than in prayer, and twice raised her left foot to scratch the calf of her right leg. As the day grew warmer a bead of sweat formed on her forehead and trickled down her cheek, absorbing and reflecting the colorful light. It fascinated me.

An hour passed. The clergyman was halfway through his oration (or so I deduced, since we had got past Judas and were about to embark on the nasty business with Pontius Pilate) when there was a distant crack as of thunder, followed by a low rumbling that traveled up the wooden pews and into our spines. This caused some muttering in the ranks; but the priest carried on regardless, and Sam whispered, "Artillery fire-no danger to us; the Dutch don't have a cannon capable of reaching Montreal from their trenches."

That reassured me. A few more minutes passed-the Stations of the Cross were painstakingly negotiated-then came another explosion, nearer this time, causing the clergyman to hesitate and a rain of dust to sift down from the ceiling. "That was close!" I exclaimed to Sam.

He was frowning. "It shouldn't be possible ..."

Major Lampret hushed us. But it came again: a sharp report and a rolling boom, so loud that it seemed to be-perhaps was-right next door. I heard the distant clangor of fire bells, and someone in the city began to crank a hand siren-a dolorous and eerie sound, which I had not heard before.

Now the regiment stood up in alarm, and the clergyman at the pulpit waved his hands in an urgent but indecipherable gesture, and Major Lampret shouted, "Form up! Form up and march out, boys, we're wanted elsewhere, but don't run, you'll clog the doors-"

Then a shell struck a deafening blow to the cathedral itself, causing the illustrated windows to shatter and fly inward from their frames. Shards of glass, brightly colored and razor-sharp, cascaded down around us. I saw a man near the pulpit pierced by some crystalline splinter from a glass saint-the wound was almost certainly mortal-and then a general panic began in earnest, despite Major Lampret's shouted orders. At first I joined the rush for the door. Then I turned back to see what had happened to the fascinating chorister. But she was gone-just a flash of white among a flock of billowing surplices as the choir hurried into an adjoining chamber.

I followed behind Sam and Julian, and had almost achieved the exit, when some force from behind (probably an over eager infantryman) pushed me off-balance, so that I fell, and struck my head on the exquisitely carved backboard of a pew, knocking myself quite unconscious.

I was not out of my senses for long-just long enough to become separated from my regiment.

I raised my head in confusion, aware of the pain in my temple and little more. The great cathedral was still intact, except for the shattered windows, and the stampede had left it almost deserted, save for the priest and a few other clergymen who were attending the wounded man down front. I touched my scalp where it had impacted the pew, and my fingers came back stained with blood. I looked around for Sam, or Julian, or even Lymon Pugh, but they were gone with all the rest-gone back to camp, I guessed, to prepare some response to this fresh Dutch outrage. I was sure they would have taken me with them, except that I had fallen between the rows of pews, and would have been easily missed in the rush. I reasoned that I ought to rejoin my regiment as soon as possible, lest I be set down as Absent Without Leave or marked as a deserter.

But when I stumbled out of the cathedral I was immediately lost. The shelling had caused no little damage in the neighborhood, and the street by which I had arrived here was blocked with debris and partially aflame. City folk rushed about haphazardly, some wounded or burned, and red-painted fire-reels drawn by panting dray horses clattered down the open roadways with their brass bells fiercely clanging. But only certain areas of this vast City had been damaged-it was so large that most of it seemed untouched-and after a brief thought I resolved to work my way north until I came within sight of the iron bridge my regiment had originally crossed. It was with this purpose in mind that I set out along a side street undamaged in the attack, where the four-and five-story concrete buildings had been divided into shops, and the floors above were balconied and iron-railed and decorated with spring flowers. The picturesque alley was not straight, however; it twined like a serpent, and when I reached the next intersection I couldn't tell which way to go.

In the meantime crowds of city people continued to brush past me. Not a few of them were fleeing the artillery attack in the cathedral district, and they were too absorbed in their own misfortune to notice one dislocated infantryman. I stood helpless in my confusion, until my eyes were drawn by a flourish of white across the way-a surplice robe, as you may have guessed, and it was worn by none other than the woman with the spring-loaded hair and lustrous eyes. I dashed across the street, heedless of the many passing carriages.

"You were in the church!" I said when I reached her; and she turned to squint at me, her small fists clenched in case I proved hostile.

"Yes?" she said brusquely.

"Were you-ah-were you hurt?"

"Obviously I was not," she replied, in a tone so cool that I supposed she must have grown accustomed to being shelled by the Dutch from time to time, the event being no more surprising to her than a summer squall.

"I was!" I managed to say. "I injured my head!"

"How unfortunate. I hope you recover."

She turned away.

"Wait!" I said, and gestured back toward the billowing smoke. "What's happening here?"

"It's called war," she said as if she were addressing an idiot who had inquired about the color of the sky (and in her defense, that must have been how I sounded). "The Dutch have launched an artillery barrage. Though it seems to be finished for the moment. Shouldn't you be with your regiment, Soldier?"

"I should be; and I would be, if I could find it. Which way is the big iron bridge?"

"There are several, but the one you want is just down that direction."

I thanked her and added, "May I see you safely home?"

"Of course not," she said "My name is Adam Hazzard," I said, remembering the importance of a polite introduction.

"Calyxa," she said grudgingly-the first time I had heard that interesting name. "Go back to your regiment, Adam Hazzard, and put a bandage on your head. It's bleeding."

"You sing very beautifully."

"Huh," said she, and walked off without looking back.

It was a brief meeting but a pleasant one, even under these extraordinary circumstances, and as I hurried to the bridge, despite my anxiety, and the blood trickling down my face, and the smoke rising from the city behind me, I thanked Providence, or Fate, or Fortune, or one of those other pagan deities, for having brought the two of us together.

* The sensitive reader, not so hardened, may dislike to see rough talk set down verbatim on the innocent page. I apologize, and rest my defense on the cold grounds of veracity.

* A Dominion Officer, who is by definition a commissioned officer trained at the Dominion Academy in Colorado Springs, wears the standard uniform of an Infantryman of his rank, but adorned with red-and-purple pipings and blazons, and a pair of silver Angel's Wings pinned to the chest, and the soft wide-brimmed hat sometimes called a "chaplain's crown."

* Railroad bridges aside. But even the airy trestle at Connaught, which crosses the River Pine, might have fit inside this cathedral, if properly folded.