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last night," he said,
    "that Patsy has requested to join the convent." He added, "She's A R C D'X • 32

    angry with me." The carriage stopped at the abbey gate. An old stooped abbess trudged wrathfully out into the snow to meet them.

    "I'm Patsy's father," Thomas said to her in French, stepping from the carriage.

    The abbess regarded him coolly. She peered at Sally over Thomas' shoulder. "Christendom knows you too well, monsieur,"
    she said. "Your visit is irregular. The girls are already underway with their chores and duties."

    "I'd like to speak to my daughter, please," Thomas said.

    "For a moment," the abbess answered. She led Thomas and Sally into the church. Sally continued to shiver in the cold. The church was also very cold, its stained windows gray on one side and colors squinting through the ice on the other side where the sun was rising. The abbess and Thomas did not speak. The abbess vanished and Sally sat in one of the pews as Thomas paced up and down the church aisle. When the abbess finally reappeared in one of the doorways, Patsy was with her. Near the altar the abbess hung back, watching. Patsy began to cry when Thomas took her in his arms. He gave her a handkerchief and, after she'd wiped her eyes, she looked at Sally. "You bought her some clothes," she said in a small voice.

    "Yes," Thomas answered.

    "Why did you bring her here?" Patsy's face was still buried in his handkerchief.

    Thomas gestured to Sally and said gently to his daughter, "This isn't her fault. She doesn't deserve your fury, your fury's with me."
    He took Patsy by the arm and they began to walk around the border of the church. In her pew Sally watched them circle in silence. For a long time they just walked, not talking at all, as though in the early-morning carriage ride from Paris Thomas had no luck trying to figure out what he would say at this moment. In the empty resonance of the church the buzz of their voices finally reached Sally, but it wasn't until their third time around she made out the words. "Do you know," she heard Patsy plead, "the way they say your name here? In the street the common people say it when they need to fill their hearts with hope. I never believed,"
    she said bitterly, "that my father was just another fine Virginia aristocrat, having relations with his slavewomen."

    Thomas led Patsy to a pew, where they sat down. He continued STEVE ERICKSON • 33

    to hold her hand. "There are things," he said, "a man can explain least of all to those whom he most owes explanations. Something happened to me after your mother died. Something happened to me after Maria left." The abbess watched intently from the altar.
    "I'm not here to make you promises," Thomas said to Patsy. "I'm here to try and dissuade you from a decision I believe you're making not because it's what you want but because you're angry with me. I want to dissuade you from this decision because it will hurt you more than me, because you're only using your own life to reproach me."

    "I've heard that Grandfather Wayles had many slavewomen,"
    Patsy said.

    "Yes."

    "I've heard—" She looked at Sally.

    "I believe," Thomas said, "that Sally is Grandfather Wayles'
    daughter."

    "Then she and Mother were sisters?" Patsy said angrily. "Then she's my aunt?" Patsy asked in disbelief, pointing at Sally. "Will she next be my mother?"

    The abbess hurried over from the altar now. "It's most irregular, monsieur," she announced in French, hovering at their side. "It's time for the girl to return to her chores and duties."

    Thomas stood up from the pew. He looked down at Patsy and sighed. "I'm taking you home. You're still of an age that I can make these decisions for you."

    "You should think of the child," the abbess protested.

    "Of course."

    "It's unfortunate," said the abbess, "that your own hatred of God blinds you to—"

    "I can appreciate that she's politically valuable to you," Thomas said to the abbess in English. "She is after all the daughter of