It was some minutes before we were able to take up our usual selves again. Iris looked at me. I smiled weakly and cleared my throat: I was conscious that I ached all over. I glanced at my watch and saw that he had spoken to us for an hour and a half during which time I had not moved. I stretched painfully and stood up. Others did the same: we had shared an experience and it was the first time in my life that I knew what it was like to be the same as others, my heart’s beat no longer individual, erratic, but held for at least this one interval of time in concert with those of strangers. It was a new, disquieting experience: to be no longer an observer, a remote intelligence ... for ninety minutes to have been a part of the whole. Iris walked with me to the anteroom where we stood for a moment watching the others who had also gathered here to talk in low voices, their expressions bewildered. She did not have to ask me what I thought. I told her immediately, in my own way, impressed but less than reverent. “I see what you mean. I see what it is that holds you, fascinates you but I still wonder what it is really all about.” “You saw. You heard.” “I saw an ordinary man. I heard a sermon which was interesting, although I might be less impressed if I read it to myself....” Deliberately I tried to throw it all away, that instant of belief, that paralysis of will, that sense of mysteries revealed in a dazzle of light. But as I talked, I realized that I was not really dismissing it, that I could not alter the experience even though I might dismiss the man and mock the text: something _had_ happened and I told her what I thought it was. “It is not truth, Iris, but hypnosis.” She nodded. “I’ve often thought that. Especially at first when I was conscious of his mannerisms, when I could see, as only a woman can perhaps, that this was just a man; yet something _does_ happen when you listen to him, when you get to know him. You must find that out for yourself; and you will. It may not prove to be anything which has to do with him. There’s something in oneself which stirs and comes alive at his touch, through his agency.” She spoke quickly, excitedly. I felt the passion with which she was charged. But suddenly it was too much for me. I was bewildered and annoyed; I wanted to get away. “Don’t you want to meet him?” I shook my head. “Another time maybe, but not now. Shall I take you back?” “No. I’ll get a ride in to Santa Monica. I may even stay over for the night. He’ll be here a week.” I wondered again if she might have a personal interest in Cave: though I doubted it, anything was possible. She walked me back to the car, past the lighted chapel, over the summery lawn, down the dark street whose solid prosaicness helped to dispel somewhat the madness of the hour before. We made a date to meet later on in the week. She would tell Cave about me and I would meet him. I interrupted her then. “What _did_ he say, Iris? What did he say tonight?”