“The Symposium was the model, yes. There are other ways of casting dialogues such as introducing the celebrated dead brought together for a chat in Limbo. I thought, though, that I should keep the talk to only two. Cave and myself ... Socrates and Alcibiades.” Alcibiades was precisely the wrong parallel but I left it uncorrected, noticing how delicately the hollow at the base of her throat quivered with life’s blood and although I attempted, as I often had before with bitter success, to think of her as so much mortal flesh, the body and its beauty only pulp and bone, only beautiful to a human eye ... hideous, no doubt, to the eye of a geometric progression ... that afternoon I was lost and I could not become, even for a moment, an abstract intelligence again: I saw the bone; I saw the dust, yet I saw her existing, despite her nature and her fate, triumphant in the present. I cursed the flaw in my own flesh and hated life. “We liked it very much,” she said, not divining my mood, unaware of my sudden passion and its attendant despair. “You don’t think it’s too strong, do you? All morality, not to mention the churches, will be aligned against us.” “John was worried at first ... not that opposition frightens him and it is _his_ idea; I mean you wrote the dialogue but it reflects exactly what he’s always thought.” Though in love’s agony, I looked at her sharply to make certain she was perfectly serious: she was; this helped soothe the pain. She had been hypnotized by Cave. I wondered how Clarissa could ever have thought it was the other way around. “In a way we’re already on record,” Iris looked thoughtfully across the room at Cave who was showing Paul and Stokharin a large map of some strange country. “The Centers have helped a good many couples to adjust to one another without marriage and without guilt.” “But then there’s the problem of what to do with the children when the family breaks up.” Iris sighed. “I’m afraid that’s already a problem. Our Centers are taking care of a good many children already. A number, of course, go out for adoption to bored couples who need something to amuse them. I suppose we’ll have to establish nurseries as a part of each Center until, finally, the government assumes the responsibility.” “_If_ it becomes Cavite.” “When it becomes Cavite.” She was powerful in her casualness. “Meanwhile there are laws of adoption which vary from state to state and, if we’re not careful, we’re apt to come up against the law.” “Paul looks after us,” she smiled. “Did you know that he has nearly a hundred lawyers on our pay roll? All protecting us.” “From what?” I had not kept track of this. “Lawsuits ... mostly attempts by state legislatures to outlaw the Centers on the grounds of immorality and so on. The lawyers are kept busy all the time.” “Why haven’t I read about any of this in the papers?”