Mary’s automatic narrative drew to a close. It was as if she knew that to be whole was to endure not only Stella’s comings and goings but the traffic of many souls, endangered souls, in ceaseless angelic/daemonic paradox that cures, yet never cures wholly.
Staring into the spiritual mirror, Mary had no illusions about the difficulties and the tragedies that the making of new community of self presented. They were rooted in her own riddles of body and mind and the tormenting camouflage that Joseph Marsden had helped her to begin to unravel.