[Paul has stopped walking, at some point in Palamedes' explanation. He has stopped looking at anything on the walls. He is simply standing there, looking at Palamedes, with eyes wider than they were even on the ice, when he first saw magic.

He had told Palamedes he was sorry about his losses assuming that, if the soul was real in the way he was inferring, there was an end, if the soul was not eternal, or an afterlife, if it was. The idea that any one of those pleasant seeming people downstairs are now insane ghosts lost in a River leading nowhere was not one that occurred to him.]

I see. [His voice is careful, as he thinks it through. He has to assume that his initial shock at learning this isn't completely abnormal, although it probably happens at a younger age.] Maybe we should-

[And he can't go through with it. He stops, presses two aching fingers into the bridge of his nose, and shakes his head.] I keep saying things that make it worse. You should have asked me to turn her into a statue of salt, something like that. I'd have been better at it.