“That’s a risk we have to take. But John is right. We must get out and see the people ... talk to them direct.” Her voice was urgent. I looked at her thoughtfully, seeing the change that three years of extraordinary activity had wrought: she was overweight and her face, as sometimes happens in the first access of weight, was smooth, without lines, younger-looking but also without much character or expression ... I kept thinking irrelevantly of a marshmallow for, in the light of day, her casually made-up face did resemble a pale smoothly powdered confection. Her wonderful sharpness, her old fineness was entirely gone and the new Iris, the busy, efficient Iris had become like ... like ... I groped for the comparison, the memory of someone similar I had known in the past, but the ghost did not materialize; and so haunted, faintly distrait, I talked to the new Iris I did not really know, to the visible half of a like-pair whose twin was lost somewhere in my memory. “I’ll be only too happy to leave,” I said, helping myself to the salad which was being served us by one or the Eurasian servants Paul, in an exotic mood, had engaged to look after the penthouse and the person of Cave. “I don’t think I’ve been away from here half a dozen times in two years.” “It’s been awfully hard,” Iris agreed. Her eyes shifted regularly to Cave, like an anxious parent. “Of course I’ve had more chance than anyone to get out but I haven’t seen nearly as much as I ought. It’s my job, really, to look at all the Centers, to supervise in person all the schools but of course I can’t if Paul insists on turning every trip I take into a kind of pageant.” “It’s for your own protection.” “I think we’re much safer than Paul thinks. The country’s almost entirely Cavite.” “All the more reason to be careful. The die-hards are on their last legs; they’re maniacal, some of them.” “Well, we must take our chances. John says he won’t stay here another autumn. September is his best month, you know. I think he’s a little superstitious about it: it was September when he first spoke Cavesword.” “What does Paul say?” I looked down the table at our ringmaster who was telling Clarissa what she had seen in Europe. Iris frowned. “He’s doing everything he can to keep us here ... I can’t think why. John’s greatest work has been done face to face with people yet Paul acts as if he didn’t dare let him out in public. We have quarreled about this for over a year. Paul and I.” “He’s quite right. I know. I’d be nervous to go about in public without some sort of protection. You should see the murderous letters I get at the _Journal_.” “We’ve nothing to fear,” said Iris flatly. “And we have everything to gain by mixing with people. We could easily grow out of touch, marooned in this tower.”