Not accustomed to the neutral response, I stammered something about the pleasures of gardens; Iris’s calm indifference saved me from what might have been a truly mawkish outburst calculated to interest her at any cost (mawkish because, I am confident, that none of our deepest wishes or deeds is, finally, when honestly declared, very wonderful or mysterious: simplicity not complexity is at the center of our being; fortunately the trembling “I” is seldom revealed, even to paid listeners, for, conscious of the appalling directness of our needs, we wisely disguise their nature with a legerdemain of peculiar cunning). Much of Iris’s attraction for me ... and at the beginning that attraction did exist ... was that one did not need to discuss so many things: of course the better charades were not called into being which, creatively speaking, was a pity; but then it was a relief _not_ to pretend and, better still, a relief not to begin the business of plumbing shallows under the illusion that a treasure chest of truth might be found on the mind’s sea floor ... a grim ritual which was popular in those years, especially in the suburbs and housing projects where the mental therapists were ubiquitous and busy. With Iris, one did not suspend, even at a cocktail party, the usual artifices of society. All was understood, or seemed to be, which is exactly the same thing. We talked about ourselves as though of absent strangers. Then: “Have you known Clarissa long?” I asked. She shook her head. “I met her only last winter.” “Then this is your first visit here? to the valley?” “The first,” she smiled, “but it’s a little like home, you know. I don’t mean Detroit, but a memory of home, got from books.” I thought so too. Then she added that she did not read any longer and I was a little relieved; somehow with Iris one wanted not to talk about books or the past. So much of her charm was that she was entirely in the present. It was her gift, perhaps her finest quality, to invest the moment with a significance which in recollection did not exist except as a blurred impression of excitement. She created this merely by existing. I was never to learn the trick, for her conversation was not, in itself, interesting and her actions were usually calculable in advance, making all the more unusual her peculiar effect. She asked me politely about my work, giving me then the useful knowledge that, though she was interested in what _I_ was doing, she was not much interested in the life of the Emperor Julian. I made it short. “I want to do a biography of him. I’ve always liked history and so, when I settled down in the house, I chose Julian as my work.” “A life’s work?” “Hardly. But another few years. It’s the reading which I most enjoy, and that’s treacherous. There is so much of interest to read that it seems a waste of time and energy to write anything ... especially if it’s to be only a reflection of reflections.” “Then why do it?”