Page 969 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

But he did love her. With all his heart he loved her.
All his heart?
All of it he knew about. And yet when his deepest secrets were revealed in that first voyage Outside, it was not Novinha that his heart conjured there. So apparently there was someone who mattered even more to him.
Well, he couldn't help what went on in his unconscious mind, any more than Novinha could. All he could control was what he actually did, and what he was doing now was showing Novinha that regardless of how she tried to drive him away, he would not be driven. That no matter how much she imagined that he loved Jane and his involvement in the great affairs of the human race more than he loved her, it was not true, she was more important to him than any of it. He would give it all up for her. He would disappear behind monastery walls for her. He would weed rows of unidentified plant life in the hot sun. For her.
But even that was not enough. She insisted that he do it, not for her, but for Christ. Well, too bad. He wasn't married to Christ, and neither was she. Still, it couldn't be displeasing to God when a husband and wife gave all to each other. Surely that was part of what God expected of human beings.
"You know I don't blame you for the death of Quim," she said, using the old family nickname for Estevao.
"I didn't know that," he said, "but I'm glad to find it out."
"I did at first, but I knew all along that it was irrational," she said. "He went because he wanted to, and he was much too old for some interfering parent to stop him. If I couldn't, how could you?"
"I didn't even want to," said Ender. "I wanted him to go. It was the fulfillment of his life's ambition."
"I even know that now. It's right. It was right for him to go, and it was even right for him to die, because his death meant something. Didn't it?"
"It saved Lusitania from a holocaust."
"And brought many to Christ." She laughed, the old laugh, the rich ironic laugh that he had come to treasure if only because it was so rare. "Trees for Jesus," she said. "Who could have guessed?"
"They're already calling him St. Stephen of the Trees."
"That's quite premature. It takes time. He must first be beatified. Miracles of healing must take place at his tomb. Believe me, I know the process."