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In that respect she had the right of it. However, she and the other diners were not close to the truth in their estimates of the age of the four and in their guesses about the amount of exercise and corsetry that might have been necessary to turn out the apparently flawless figures of the women. All four handsome people had been around for a very long time and were quite senior among their own kind.While ethereal bodies, like all bodies, do decay, the process is very slow. No one in either constituency had yet died of old age, though that was always a possibility. They knew they would die eventually, one way or the other, as many of their kind had. Till then, however, they would take care of themselves and love as though tomorrow might be the end. Moreover, the wondrous bodies of the women were not exactly their reality. Rather they were surrogates for even more dazzling beauty.

As they sipped Bushmills Green (straight up, of course, because whatever they were, they were not Yanks who put ice in everything), they chatted amiably about the things that Irish men and women discuss at Sunday evening suppers—sports, the latest political scandal, the stupidities of Church leaders, the world news, the idiocies of American foreign policy. Not a word under the circumstances could be said about children. They avoided any mention of the reason for their meeting. Only when the plates had been removed and the sweets consumed, and the coffee and the port served, did they, like all the other Irish, turn to the matter at hand.

“Well now, Mike,”said Maeve, she of the scorching red hair, “what’s this about reconciliation? We all of us know that question was closed long ago.”

Michael lit his cigar and puffed on it thoughtfully.

“You know as well as I do,Maeve, that the Other never closes the door on anyone.”

The two couples, you see, represented the remnants of the original war in heaven—Mike and Gaby the side of the Seraphs and Maeve and Mac(Lir) the side of the Shee. Gaby, the smartest and most perceptive of these distinguished folk (not for nothing had she been sent to Nazareth), thought that she would much rather sit down across the table from Ian Paisley than persuade the Shee that peace was possible between the ancient rivals. She loved Maeve and Mac—Seraphs are programmed to love, though not fated to do so. Yet there had been so much hurt, so much pain . . .

“We are not all persuaded,”M ac said, a touch pompously, “that we want forgiveness. We have been Shee for so long that it seems rather more appealing than being Seraphs.”

Gaby had told the Other in no uncertain terms that it had been a mistake to send the Shee to Ireland. “They’ve been there so long,”sh e had argued, “that now they think and act like they’re Irish. They never say what they mean, and they never mean what they say.”

Many of the Seraphs said that Gaby was the Other’s favorite. Hence she could say more than anyone else would dare to say, and the Other would merely laugh, like an amused parent with a winsome little girl. Gaby insisted that the Other had no favorites. However, she knew better.

“That’s not the issue,Mac.”Mike sipped his cognac thoughtfully. “You don’t have to become Seraphs . . . In fact, you couldn’t even if you wanted to.”

“Why is the Other suddenly so interested in forgiving us?”M aeve demanded, her face turning red. “We’ve been out of favor for a long time? Why can’t he leave us alone? Why has He changed his mind about us?”

Gaby pictured the Other as a She, not a He. However, the Other combined the perfections of both. Yet as she often said, if you’ve ever held a newborn offspring, you know that’s how the Other feels about all Her creatures.

For a millennium of millennia the Shee had complained about being outcasts. Now they were arguing that they liked being outcasts. Typical. Gaby wanted to respond furiously that implacable forgiveness was in the very nature of the Other.However, she tried to contain her displeasure.

“The Other hasn’t changed, Maevie. You’ve never been out of