e face. The sight of her tears made
Simon's own eyes burn.

Friar Mathieu stood up, leaning heavily on his stick. He took Simon's
arm, whispered a good-bye to Rachel, and drew Simon out of the room.
Silently they went back up to the top-floor loggia. Simon seethed and
churned, his mind full of confusion and pain.

They sat together on a bench in the deepening twilight. The sun was down
and the sky over the distant hills was copper-colored.

"How clumsy I was," Simon said. "She will tell us nothing now."

"You learned quite a bit," said Friar Mathieu, "if you think about what
she told you."

"I know this much," said Simon. "I have been a fool. Sophia has been
lying to me."

"Everyone in love is a fool, Simon. The more in love, the more they want
to believe whatever the beloved tells them. Only a man or woman in love
with God can be a fool without risk."

From the distant walls of Viterbo, the guards called the hours to one
another. Their long-drawn cries echoed against the stone building
fronts.

"What did you mean, think about what she told me?"

Friar Mathieu sighed. "Rachel said that Sophia told her after they left
Orvieto she would not _have_ to stay with Tilia Caballo anymore. Rachel
was not at Caballo's of her own free will. And you may have noticed that
when I suggested that Sophia sent her there, she did not deny it."

Simon felt another rush of anger at Friar Mathieu for trying to make him
believe evil of Sophia. "Are you saying that Sophia forced that girl
into a brothel? Father, Sophia is too much of an innocent to be a party
to anything like that."

But he remembered that moment of deepest intimacy they had shared last
autumn outside Perugia, the moment he had delighted in reliving
thousands of times. She had surprised him with the suddenness of her
passion, with the swift, sure way she had guided him into taking her and
had taken pleasure from him. Of course, he had thought, she would know
what to do. She had been married. But surely a chaste widow who had
known only one man in her life would have shown some hesitation, some
timidity, some inner struggle?

Simon felt rage building up within him. He hated these doubts. He wanted
to lash out at someone.

Friar Mathieu's voice came to him again, mild but inexorable. "Rachel
said she asked Sophia to take her _back_ to Ugolini's. Rachel must have
lived at Ugolini's when she first came to Orvieto. If you say that
Sophia could not have been the one