I should mention, though, one significant omission in his conversation during those first crucial years: he never discussed ethical questions; that was to come much later. At the beginning he had but one vision and it was, in its terrible truth, quite inhuman and anarchic: man dies, consciousness dies with him: it is good to die, good not to be. On this the Cavite system was constructed and what came after in the moral and ethical spheres was largely the work of others in his name. Much of this I anticipated in that first conversation with him, so unlike, actually, the dialogue which I composed ending, I still think complacently despite the irony with which time has tarnished all those bright toys for me, with the essential line: “Death is neither hard nor bad; only the dying hurts.” With that firmly postulated the rest was inevitable. Cave talked that evening about California and Oregon and Washington (geography, places were always to fascinate and engage him while people, especially after the early years, ceased to be remarkable to him; he tended to get confused those myriad faces which passed before him like successive ripples in a huge sea). He talked of the cities he had visited on the seaboard, new cities to him, all of them. He compared their climates and various attractions like a truly devoted tourist, eager to get the best of each place, to encounter the _genius loci_ and possess it. “But I don’t like staying in any place long.” He looked at me then and again I felt that sense of a power being focused on me ... it was not unlike what one experiences during an X-ray treatment when the humming noise indicates that potent rays are penetrating one’s tissue and, though there is actually no sensation, _something_ is experienced, power is felt. And so it invariably was that, right until the end, Cave, whenever he chose, could turn those wide bleak eyes upon me and I would experience his force anew. “I want to keep moving, new places, that’s what I like. You get a kind or charge traveling. At least I do. I always thought I’d travel but I never figured it would be like this; but then of course I never thought of all this until just awhile ago. “Can you remember when it was? how it was exactly you got ... started?” I wanted a sign obviously: Constantine’s _labarum_ occurred to me: _in hoc signo vinces_. Already ambition was stirring, and the little beast fed ravenously on every scrap that came its way for I was, in that patio, experiencing my own revelation, the compass needle no longer spinning wildly but coming to settle at last, with many hesitancies and demurs, upon a direction, drawn to a far pole’s attraction.