"Touché," she murmured. Her gaze flicked down briefly at the knife and back to him again. "When I was a little girl," she went on, seemingly apropos of nothing, "I believed God was German. Every night I would start out my prayers 'Dear Herr God'. I was entirely convinced that if I was bad, I'd be punished somehow. No reward if I was good, mind you. For some people, authority can only punish, never reward."*

Let him draw whatever answer he would from that. It was, in fact, one of the few remaining childhood memories that she was reasonably sure was true.

*((Paraphrase from The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the Twentieth Century))