THE DAWN was breaking. From the east, along the streets, flashes of the sun stabbed into the snow. Cold, beautiful light was all over the city. People were waking, dressing, living again after the night. Already, in Apple Place, it seemed that the happenings of the night were a part of a dream, things to be spoken of the way you speak of a legend, but things that had actually never happened.

Marion hadn’t slept. Now, walking with the man she loved, all of the night was a confused dream. She remembered going with the priest, with the bodies of the poet and the woman. She wouldn’t leave him. She remembered that they went to a police station, and the music master was there. He stared at her, but she didn’t think that he had seen her. Then they went back to the mission. Now they were going back to Apple Place.

She thought that after the night she could sense something of the life in the Place. Jack thought so too. It was a sprawling jumble of life, without meaning and without reason, men and women reaching and struggling, hating and loving and killing.

“But something is good,” she said. She was happy. Out of all these people, perhaps she was the only one; but she was happy.

“Something,” the priest agreed. “There must be something. But when we lose our faith in everything else, what are we to look for? We go on seeking and seeking—”

“Together, though,” Marion said.

“Always together.”

It seemed to Marion that they were walking on into the sunrise …