But the knowledge, like the pleasure, passed in an instant, and he collapsed, still crying out softly, against his wife. There was a confused mess of flame where his mind ought to have been, and he did not know why he was crying. “There now,” his wife said, putting her hand on the back of his neck, and stroking him there. “It wasn’t all that bad, was it, my love?”
“No,” Tomo said. And then he said it over and over, “No, no, no.”
“Go to sleep, now,” his wife said in reply to his continued protest. Tomo became quiet, but the word still echoed in his head. He rolled onto his side and held her even closer, thinking how she was undying, and how he himself was undying, how Heaven waits for the faithful, how a man is such a piece of work that there can be no end to him, and how he wanted to believe that.