There was no good reason for it, as far as Joseph could tell, no good reason for any of it. They were betrothed, engaged; the date was set, the china was registered, the tuxes were rented, the invitations mailed. And Mary was pregnant.

Not by Joseph mind you. As bad as that situation would have been, they could have coped, hidden the truth for a while, whatever. But no, as bad as that would have been, this was far worse. It was just too bad to be true. A nightmare. And Joseph kept hoping he would wake up.

When Mary told him the awful news, Joseph tried to take it like a man. He acted like a man anyway, storming about and swearing to kill whoever it was that got Mary pregnant. But she wouldn't tell him who the scoundrel was, wouldn't come clean. She was protecting the dog, of course. The Law gave Joseph every right to have this scum stoned -- and Mary, too, if he wished. But she wouldn't talk, except to blather some silliness about an angel and Elizabeth and the Spirit of the Lord. But hadn't the Lord written the rules? Wasn't it the Lord's Law that gave him the right to have her stoned?

There was no good reason for it, as far as Joseph could tell, no good reason for any of it; for the pregnancy in the first place, for her protecting this guy, for her lying about it. Joseph had every right to be as angry as he was. Had every right to want him dead, and Mary, too.

But Mary. She was so young, so gentle, a flower more than a girl. Or a dove -- her voice cooed, even with bad news, even with those words that had shattered his heart: "Joseph, I'm going to have a baby." He had wanted to hear those words someday, but not this way, not now. Whenever he heard them again, they would be a knife in his chest, a terrible hurt that would never go away entirely, even if Mary were dead. And what good purpose could that serve? None. It would just be more pain, and there had been enough of that .... would yet be plenty enough of pain, for the both of them.

He could just imagine the taunts of his friends:

"Joseph you have heard, what Mary says occurred.

Yet it may be so, hut is it likely, no."

"Mary may be pure, but Joseph are you sure?"

How is one to tell? Suppose, for instance ... well ..."

W. H. Auden, the poet, has pictured Joseph at home that night, in an empty house. Sitting there in the dark, he hears everything: the drip of the bathroom tap, the creak of the sofa spring, the wind against the window. And he hears Mary, again and again, telling him about the angel, about the message from God, about the savior coming -- with a puzzling assurance, telling him everything, for no good reason, unless of course, the reason she was telling him with such assurance was because it was all true.

True. Could it really be true? She had never lied to him before. Was she lying now? Or not? Angels. The Spirit of the Lord. A holy child, a grace, not a scandalous disgrace.

But there was no proof. Who would believe it? How could he believe it? If only he had some proof, some undeniable, irrefutable evidence that what Mary said was true.