Then Paul walked out of range of the camera leaving, briefly, a view of a chair and a table behind which a handsome blue velvet curtain fell in rich graceful folds from the invisible ceiling to an imitation marble floor. An instant later, Cave walked into view. Both Clarissa and I leaned forward in our chairs tensely, eagerly, anxiously: we were there as well as he. This was our moment too. My hands grew cold and my throat dry. Cave was equal to the moment. He looked tall: the scale of the table, the chair was exactly right. He wore a dark suit and a dark unfigured tie with a white shirt that gave him an austereness which, in person, he lacked. I saw Paul’s stage-managing in this. He moved easily into range, his eyes cast down. Not until he had placed himself in front of the table and the camera had squarely centered him, did he look up, look directly into the lens. Clarissa gasped and I felt suddenly pierced: the camera, the lights had magnified rather than diminished his power. It made no difference now what he said. The magic was working. Clarissa and I sat in the twilight of her drawing room, entirely concentrated on that vivid screen, on the dark figure upon rich blue, on the pale eyes and the hands which seldom moved. It was like some fascinating scene in a skillful play which, quite against one’s wish and aesthetic judgment, pulled one to it, became, at least for that short time beyond real time, a part of one’s own private drama of existence, all sharpened by artifice, by calculated magic. Not until Cave was nearly finished did those first words of his, spoken so easily, so quietly, begin to come back to me as he repeated them in his coda. His voice increasing a little in volume, yet still not hurrying, not forcing, not breaking the mood which his first glance had created and which voice and eyes together maintained without once letting go. The burden of his words was, as always, the same. Yet this time it seemed more awesome, more final, undeniable ... in short, the truth. Though I’d always accepted his first premise, I had never been much impressed by the ways he found of stating it, even though I always responded to his particular power. This night, before the camera and in the sight of millions, he perfected his singular art of communication and the world was his. When he finished, Clarissa and I sat for a moment in complete silence, the chirping of a commercial the only sound in the room. At last she said: “The brandy is over there on the console. Get me some.” Then she switched off the screen from her chair and the lights of the room brightened again. “I feel dragged through a wringer,” she said after her first mouthful of brandy. “I had no idea it would work so well, like this, on television.” I felt strangely empty, let down. There was hardly any doubt now of Cave’s effectiveness yet I felt joyless and depleted, as though part of my life had gone, leaving an ache.