One pillar was just within reach. Stretching her hand, the tips of her fingers ran over the smooth and the rough of the mosaic surface, each square inch of glazed ceramic a work of art in itself, each line of mortar its frame. — If I stood here a month I might see them all, she thought. As though walking the Louvre without walking.

She glanced down the long chamber. The sun was falling, and the far end of the hall was already dark, in the expanse the other columns were like trees, somehow solemn (was that her feeling, written into the dusk?), lifting a painted canopy overhead, lifting history overhead, roots buried in centuries of shuffling feet, branches hidden in an incense haze.

— A grove of rooted canvases, twenty trunks painted like the Louvre, and they cannot move; they’ll never move.

A bell rang somewhere over the rooftops, muffled and blocks away, calling all in from the evening. She imagined the city squares emptying of life (holding space for its return, of course; and doesn’t night wait like a held breath, like an empty hand, waiting to be filled again?), their passengers and merchants quietly packing things purchased or things unsold, folding up their days, a little tired, at best satisfied, at least complete, turning on a heel, a wave of the hand, a nod of the head, good night, good night.

— Good-night, she thought to the cathedral space around her. — Good-night, she imagined it echoed a reply.

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