"Thank you, Lord."

"The things he accused you of, child?"

"Yes,"

"Terrible things."

"Yes."

"Are you guilty of them?"

"I am," Quaisoir said. "I want to confess them before I die. Will you hear me?"

"I wil!," Dowd said, oozing magnanimity.

After being merely a witness to these events as they unraveled, Jude now stepped towards Quaisoir and her confessor, but Dowd heard her approach and turned to shake his head.

"I've sinned, my Lord Jesu," Quaisoir was saying. "I've sinned so many times. I beg you to forgive me."

It was the despair Jude heard in her sister's voice, rather than Dowd's rebuff, that kept her from making her presence known. Quaisoir was in extremis, and given that it was her clear desire to commune with some forgiving spirit, what right did Jude have to intervene? Dowd was not the Christ Quaisoir believed him to be, but did that matter? What would revealing the father confessor's true identity achieve now, besides adding to the sum of her sister's suffering?

Dowd had knelt beside Quaisoir and had taken her up into his arms, demonstrating a capacity for tenderness, or at least for its replication, that Jude would never have believed him capable of. For her part, Quaisoir was in bliss, despite her wounds. She clutched at Dowd's jacket and thanked him over and over for doing her this kindness. He hushed her softly, saying there was no need for her to make a catalogue of her crimes.

"You have them in your heart, and I see them there," he said. "I forgive them. Tell me instead about your husband. Where is he? Why hasn't he also come asking for forgiveness?"

"He didn't believe you were here," Quaisoir said. "I told him I'd seen you down at the harbor, but he has no faith."

"None?"

"Only in himself," she said bitterly. Dowd began to rock backward and forward as he plied her with further questions, his focus so devoted to his victim he didn't notice Jude's approach. She envied Dowd his embrace, wishing it were her arms Quaisoir was lying in instead of his.