She did not answer, but as she stood the noise of her chair brought him limping toward her. She started to move to him but he stopped abruptly and she suddenly felt a new bitter distance between them that mere steps could never cross. In the dusk she stared at his twisted leg. "Roberto," she whispered sadly. "Call me Jacob," he said harshly. "I have wrestled with angels." He thrust out his crippled leg. "... and behold a _man_ wrestled with him till morning. And when he saw that he could not overcome him he touched the sinew of his thigh and forthwith it shrank!" With no triumph, but only a mother's distressed remonstrance, Mrs. Sanchez softly wailed, "O Roberto, Roberto, I warned you. I told you." "Yes, Mama, you told me," he said. "But you did not tell me the thing most important. You did not tell me that we are devils!" She stared at him, uncomprehending. "Yes, my fine, good Mama! With all your thoughts of heaven, we are a world of devils. How or why or from whence I do not yet know. But I am going back to the White Space to seek and I only come now to see you once more and say good-by ... and...." Roberto faltered and leaned toward her as if straining to see her face in the evening gloom that had almost deepened into night. "... and ... ask your blessing." The words were hardly more than a whisper. "Going back?" she said incredulously. "I must." Anger was in her voice as she pointed to his leg. "Even with the mark of wrath you carry? You dare make more sacrilege?" She turned to go into the house. Roberto limped a few steps after her. "Mama, as you love me, your blessing! For your son." She turned in the doorway, her face hard. "I can only pray for you." Roberto watched her go inside. No light appeared and he knew she would be kneeling before the shelf of holy things in the small flickering light of the votive candle. He made his way to the front of the house to the waiting heli-taxi. He looked back at the house. _This is no longer my home_, he thought. And then, a moment later: _Was it ever?_ He looked up at the stars and thought of the pure brilliance of White Space and the magnificent golden creatures. _Why the sweet anguish in the depths of my being when I think of them and the white place? Why in spite of my fear am I drawn to it more than I am to this house which is my home? Home?_ Roberto climbed into the machine and it moved upward a little closer to the stars before turning south. End of Project Gutenberg's The Lamps of the Angels, by Richard Sabia