"Anyone can be afraid," he said, "that part is easy. Butyou have to be able to get inside people—not exactly theway you do—and feel everything they feel, just beforethey go smash—so that it feels you're going smashalong with them—and you can't do a damn thing aboutit, and you wish you could—that's pity."

Oh? And being afraid, too?

"—and being afraid. Together, they equal the grandcatharsis of true tragedy."

He hiccupped.

And the tragic figure, for whom you feel these things?He must be great and noble, mustn't he?

"True," he nodded, as though I were seated across theroom from him, "and in the last moment when theunalterable jungle law is about to prevail,, he must stareinto the faceless mask; of God, and bear himself, for thatbrief moment, above the pleas of his nature and thecourse of events."We both looked at his watch.

**What time will you be leaving?"In about fifteen minutes.

**Good. You have time to listen to a record while Idress."

He switched on his stereo and selected an album.

I shifted uneasily.

// it isn't too long....

He regarded the jacket.

"Five minutes and eight seconds. I've always maintained that it is music for the last hour of Earth."

He placed it on the turntable and set the arm.

"If Gabriel doesn't show up, this will do."

He reached for his tie as the first notes of MilesDavis* Saefa limped through the room, like a wounded thingclimbing a hill.

He hummed along with it as he reknotted his tie and'combed his hair. Davis talked through an Easter my witha tongue of brass, and the procession moved before us: Oedipus and blind Gloucester stumbled by, led byAntigone and Edgar—Prince Hamlet gave a fencer'ssalute and plunged forward, whUe black Othello lumberedon behind—Hippolytus, all in white, and the Duchess ofMalfi, sad, paraded through memory on a thousandstages.