“Don’t say 'you.’ Say 'we.’ You’re as much a part of this as I am. After all you’re a director. You’ve got a say-so in these matters. Just speak up Friday.” Paul was suddenly genial and placating. “I don’t pretend I’ve got all the answers. I’m just talking off the top of my head, like they say.” A member of the team burst into the office with the news that Bishop Winston was outside. “Now it starts,” said Paul with a grimace. The Bishop did not recognize me as we passed one another in the office. He looked grim and he was wearing clerical garb. “He’s too late,” said a lean youth, nodding at the churchman’s back. “Professional con-men,” said his companion with disgust. “They’ve had their day.” And with that in my ears, I walked out into the snow-swirling street, into the bleak opening of the new year, of Cave’s year. I was more alarmed than ever by what Paul had told me and by what I heard on every side. In drugstores and bars and restaurants, people talked of Cave. I could even tell when I did not hear the name that it was of him they spoke: a certain intentness, a great curiosity, a wonder. In the bookstores, copies of my introduction were displayed with large blown-up photographs of Cave to accompany them. Alone in a bar on Madison Avenue where I’d taken refuge from the cold, I glanced at the clippings Paul had given me. There were two sets. The first were the original perfunctory ones which had appeared, short, puzzled ... the reviewers, knowing even less philosophy than I, tended to question my proposition that Caveswood was anything more than a single speculation in rather a large field. I’d obviously not communicated his magic, only its record which, like the testament of miracles, depends entirely on faith and to inspire faith one needed Cave himself. “What do you think about the guy?” the waiter, a fragile sensitive Latin with parchment-lidded eyes mopped the spilled gin off my table (he’d seen a picture of Cave among my clippings). “It’s hard to say,” I said. “How did he strike you?” “Boy, like lightning!” The waiter beamed; a smile which showed broken teeth spoiled the delicate line of his face. “Of course I’m Catholic but this is something new. Some people been telling me you can’t be a good Catholic and go for this guy. But why not? I say. You still got Virginmerry and now you got him, too, for right now. You ought to see the crowd we get here to see the TV when he’s on. It’s wild.” It was wild, I thought, putting the clippings back into the folder. Yet it might be kept within bounds. Paul had emphasized my directorship, my place in the structure ... well, I would show them what should be done or, rather, _not_ done. Then I went out into the snow-dimmed street and hailed a cab. All the way to Iris’s apartment I was rehearsing what I would say to Paul when next we met. “Leave them alone,” I said aloud. “It is enough to open the windows.” “Open the windows!” The driver snorted. “It’s damn near forty in the street.”