And here now is poor, stupid, handsome Scipio, and his eyes already have the white and black flowers in them, and I can smell the same damn smell of meat. Is this predestination? Is this why Adeodatus was taken? So that here, in this moment, I would make the decision I am making? Is that the mysterious way we hear about, that I am spurred to do justice for Scipio by a divine injustice I can never redress? Did I meet Augustine in an artist’s studio where I stood naked for a sculptor who had designs on a rather closer encounter, and did I smile at him and desire him so acutely, because I was constructed from before my birth to want him so that the product of our passion and his abandonment of me would die, and thus lead me by the relentless mathematics of love to this choice? Is that what free will is: the right to be flogged to moral action by a deity who could make the world a paradise merely by speaking His desire?