Excitedly, we talked ... I talked mostly, I think. Cave was the theme and I the counterpoint or so I thought. He had stated it and I built on it, built outward from what I conceived to be the luminosity of his vision. Our dialogue was one of communion, I believed and he believed too. Only Iris guessed, even then, that it was not. She saw the difference; she was conscious of the division which that moment had, unknown to either of us, separated me from Cave. Each time I said “life,” he said “death.” In true amity but false concord war began.
Iris, more practical than we, deflated our visions by pulling the dialogue gently back to reality, to ways and dull means.
It was agreed that we had agreed on fundamentals, that the end of fear was desirable; that superstition should be exorcised from human affairs; that the ethical systems expressed by the major religious figures from Zoroaster to Mohammed all contained useful and applicable ideas of societal behavior which need not be entirely discarded.
At Iris’s suggestion, we left the problem of Christianity itself completely alone. Cave’s truth was sufficient cause for battle. There was no reason, she felt, for antagonizing the ultimate enemy at the very beginning.
“Let them attack you, John. You must be above quarreling; you must act as if they are too much in error even to notice.”
“I reckon I am above it,” said Cave and he sounded almost cheerful for the first time since my arrival. “I want no trouble, but if trouble comes I don’t intend to back down. I’ll just go on saying what I know.”
At midnight, Cave excused himself and went to bed.
Iris and I sat silently before the last red embers on the hearth. I sensed that something had gone wrong but I could not tell then what it was.
When she spoke, her manner was abrupt: “Do you really want to go on with this?”
“What an odd time to ask me that. Of course I do. Tonight’s the first time I really saw what it was Cave meant, what it was I’d always felt but never before known, consciously, that is. I couldn’t be more enthusiastic.”