Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. It is like a bird that has blundered down the flue and is caught indoors and flutters at the window panes. . . . But sometimes a prayer comes that you have not thought to pray, yet suddenly there it is and you pray it. . . . Sometimes the bird finds that what looks like an opening is an opening, and it flies away.

Her eyes filled with tears, but she said quietly, "I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it's being ruined is hard."

Then, in the loss of all the world, when I might have said the words I had so long wanted to say, I could not say them. I saw that I was not going to be able to say them. I saw that I was not going to talk without crying, and so I cried.

She looked at me and held out her hand. She gave me the smile that I had never seen and will not see again in this world, and it covered me all over with light.