“Then why ... Julian?”
Something in the way she said the name convinced me she had forgotten who he was if she had ever known.
“The apostasy; the last stand of paganism against Christianity.”
She looked truly interested, for the first time. “They killed him, didn’t they?”
“No, he died in battle. Had he lived longer he might at least have kept the Empire divided between the old gods and the new messiah. Unfortunately his early death was their death, the end of the gods.”
“Except they returned as saints.”
“Yes, a few found a place in Christianity, assuming new names.”
“Mother of God,” she murmured thoughtfully.
“An unchristian concept, one would have thought,” I added, though the beautiful illogic had been explained to me again and again by Catholics: how God could and could not at the same time possess a mother, that gleaming queen of heaven, entirely regnant in those days.
“I have often thought about these things,” she said, diffidently. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a student but it fascinates me. I’ve been out in California for the past few years, working. I was on a fashion magazine.” The note was exactly right: she knew precisely what that world meant and she was neither apologetic nor pleased. We both resisted the impulse to begin the names again, threading our way through the maze of fashion, through that frantic world of the peripheral arts.