Her answer was as direct and as plain as my question. “That it is good to die.” FOUR 1 This morning I reread the last section, trying to see it objectively, to match what I have put down with the memory I still bear of that first encounter with John Cave. I have not, I fear, got it. But this is as close as I can come to recalling long-vanished emotions and events. I was impressed by the man and I was shaken by his purpose. My first impression was, I think, correct: he was a born hypnotist and the text of that extraordinary message was, in the early days at least, thin, illogical and depressing if one had not heard it spoken. Later of course I, among others, composed the words which bear his name and we gave them, I fancy, a polish and an authority which, with his limited education and disregard for the works of the past, he could not have accomplished on his own, even had he wanted to. I spent the intervening days between my first and second encounters with this strange man in a state of extreme tension and irritability. Clarissa called me several times but I refused to see her, excusing myself from proposed entertainments and hinted tête-à-têtes, with an abruptness which anyone but the iron-cast Clarissa would have found appallingly rude. She said she understood, however, and she let me off without explaining what it was she understood, or thought she did. I avoided a number of parties and all acquaintances, keeping to my hotel room where I contemplated a quick return to the Hudson and to the darkening autumn. Iris telephoned me twice and, when she fixed a day at last for me to meet John Cave, I accepted her invitation, a little to my own surprise. We met in the late afternoon at her house. Only the three of us were present on that occasion. In the set of dialogues which I composed and published in later years I took considerable liberties with our actual conversations, especially this first one: in fact, as hostile critics were quick to suggest, the dialogues were created by me with very little of Cave in them and a good deal of Plato, rearranged to fit the occasion. In time, though, my version was accepted implicitly, if only because there were no longer any hostile critics. Iris served us tea in the patio. She spoke seldom and, when she did, her voice was low and curiously diffident as she asked Cave some question or instructed me. Cave himself was relaxed, quite different from my first view of him. In fact, I might not even have recognized his face had I seen him in a group.