“The praying stopped, and Alford turned from that far near distance and walked out on to the veranda alone, thinking still of that self beyond his reach in a faraway place, as a loss, as something he had been deprived of. But how do you feel the loss of a self that you did not have to lose? How can you lose an Africa you did not know? But that was what he felt: the loss of not having had that loss to lose.”
