The day after Clarissa had said good-by, Paul appeared in my office. I was surrounded by editors but at a look from him and a gesture from me they withdrew. We had each kept our secret, evidently, for none of those close to us in that building suspected that there had been a fatal division. “I seem to be in disgrace,” I said, my forefinger delicately caressing the buzzer which I had built into the arm of my chair so that I might summon aid in the event that a visitor proved to be either a bore or a maniac, two types curiously drawn to enterprises such as ours. “I wouldn’t say that.” Paul sat in a chair close to my own; I recall thinking, a little madly, that elephants are supposed to be at their most dangerous when they are quite still. Paul was noticeably controlled. Usually he managed to cross the room at least once for every full sentence; now he sat looking at me, his face without expression. “I’ve seen no one since our dinner except Clarissa,” I explained; then I added, earnestly: “I wonder where she plans to go. She didn’t....” “You’ve almost wrecked everything,” he said, his voice tight, unfamiliar in its tension. “I didn’t want to,” I said, inaccurately. I was at the moment more terrified than I’d ever been, either before or since. I could get no real grip on him: the surface he presented me was as formidable, as granitic as a prison wall. “Who told you? Iris? Cave? or were you spying?” Each question was fired at me like a bullet. “Spying on whom?” “On me, damn you!” Then it broke. The taut line of control which had held in check his anger and his fear broke all at once and the torrent flowed, reckless and overpowering: “You meddling idiot! You spied on me; you found out; you thought you’d be able to stall things by springing it like that. Well, you failed.” I recall thinking, quite calmly, how much I preferred his face in the congested ugliness of rage to its ordinary banality of expression. I was relieved, too, by the storm. I could handle him when he was out of control. I considered my counteroffensive while he shouted at me, accused me of hostility to him, of deviationism from Cavesword and of numerous other crimes. He stopped, finally, for lack of breath. “I gather,” I said, my voice shaking a little from excitement, “that at some point recently you decided that Cave should apply Cavesword to himself and die, providing us with a splendid example, an undying (I mean no pun) symbol.” “You know you found out and decided to get in on the act, to force my hand. Now he’ll never do it.” That was it then. I was relieved to be no longer in the dark. “Cave has refused to kill himself?”