Outside the room where Father Bryce meets his first extraterrestrial stand twenty marines with face-masks and oily new guns. Politely, neither Father Bryce nor the space alien mentions this.
Daniel didn’t notice when he fell. He doesn’t know when it happened, just that one day he realised that God began to give him no time, no help, no notice, and that his praises to the Almighty began to be rote, and parroted, and empty.
He fell. But he was still my angel, and he is my angel still, even now. He just carried on doing his job. He takes no joy in the work, but there is nothing else for him to do.