But she did not love Simon. What had happened between them had been a moment of being overwhelmed by feeling. It had been done, not by her, but by Sophia Orfali.
She had felt sorry for Simon and wanted to comfort him. She had been moved by the purity of his love for her, and her body, which had not known Daoud for months, ran away with her. It was a shameful thing, but not an important thing, because it did not change her love for Daoud.
It would be important to Daoud, though. He would feel that she had betrayed him. He would want revenge. He would hate Simon.
Most important, the peace with his own childhood, reached after painful struggle, might be destroyed. The beautiful state of mind he had shown her might be lost.
For the sake of his peace, she must keep silent.
She hated the decision. It meant that a part of her would always be locked away from Daoud, and he would never know it.
Very well, then. Let that, and not his wrath at the revelation, be her punishment for having let herself go that day with Simon by the lake. That would be the mutilation she would always bear. Perfect union with Daoud would be a promised land she would never enter. By suffering that, she would silently make restitution to Daoud for the wrong she had done him.
All the while she had been thinking, he had been gazing at her. Just as she reached her final decision, his eyes closed and his breathing deepened. She reached out and touched the sparse blond hairs in the center of his chest, lightly so as not to wake him.
I lost everything too. He and I are so alike.
Mother and Father. Alexis, whom she had loved in the simple way that Simon loved her. All lost in one night of fire and steel. And after that, the life she led had been so little like that of other women. A life so strange and venturesome she did not know what to think of herself. And yet a life she had loved much of the time.