g why. Because I did not understand my hatred, I
hated him all the more."

_If only we could stop talking about Simon._

But the man she loved was telling her something very important about
himself. She had to set her own discomfort aside. She had to listen.

"And now you do not hate him?" She turned over in the bed. She wanted to
see his face.

There was a peacefulness in his eyes such as she had never seen before.
Always, they had seemed to burn, white-hot. Now they were clear and
fathomless, like the sky.

"I do not hate him. I realized, as I rode along with Lorenzo, that if
your new faith is strong and your new people are good, you can remember
without danger what you loved of the old. I will always love the sound
of the Christian priests chanting in the cool dark of a church. I will
always feel especially at home in a Christian castle. But the voice I
hear in the depths of my soul today is the true voice of God, and that,
Simon de Gobignon will never hear. Unless God's all-powerful hand
reaches out for him as it did for me."

Awed, Sophia said, "I have never heard anyone speak as you do. With so
much wisdom. Except, once or twice, a priest."

He closed his eyes. "I speak as I am inspired to speak. In Islam there
are no priests that stand between God and man. There are the more
learned and the less learned, but each man and each woman can hear God."

Daoud had bared his soul to her. She wanted to do the same. Love was not
merely the coupling of naked bodies, but the union of naked minds. How
could she ever be happy with him while lying to him?

But she did not love Simon. What had happened between them had been a
moment of being overwhelmed by feeling. It had been done, not by her,
but by Sophia Orfali.

She had felt sorry for Simon and wanted to comfort him. She had been
moved by the purity of his love for her, and her body, which had not
known Daoud for months, ran away with her. It was a shameful thing, but
not an important thing, because it did not change her love for Daoud.

It would be important to Daoud, though. He would feel that she had
betrayed him. He would want revenge. He would hate Simon.

Most important, the peace with his own childhood, reached after painful
struggle, might be destroyed. The beautiful state of mind he had shown
her might be lost.

For the sake of his peace, she must keep silent.

She hated the decision. It meant that a part of her would always be
locked away from Dao