As I said all this, a shocking thought came into the back of my mind. "I hope I didn't offend you," I said quietly. "What I've been saying could be deemed offensive. My having an intimate relationship with both Sylvia and Heather, and a bunch of other people in India, shouldn't be possible, certainly not according to the standard sense of sexual relationships. Some people may see this is a perversion. They may see it as a sign of an ugly character. You may too. With this in mind, I shouldn't have brought this subject up, since it was, after all, the element of sex that had kept us apart for so long, wasn't it? On the other hand, all of this needs to be said and be urgently explored, because the old sense is wrong."

      "I'm not offended," Indira answered, "but I am puzzled. Why is the old sense wrong?"

      "It is wrong, because it denies the indivisibility of good," I replied. "All good is the outcome of universal principles which are reflected everywhere. The outcome cannot be divided. The principle that blesses one, blesses all. A principle operates universally. It does this on its own accord, and that is the only way it can operate. If we are wise, we ride the coat tails of this principle and allow ourselves to be enriched by its blessings that unfold all around us. To shut us off from this universal manifest of the principle of good, would be a denial of the principle itself. It would be a denial of God; a slap into the face of God. Every form of the privatization of good is a slap into the face of God. If we do this we isolate ourselves from the principle of the universe and its good, and force ourselves into poverty. I think this is exactly what we had both done that fateful day in Moscow when we had dinner together. That is why nothing worked out. In our case the isolation had been focused on sex, I think. Can you agree with that?"

      It seemed right, somehow, to talk about sex in the Taj Mahal, even though it was but a restaurant. "Am I right in assuming that it was sex that caused the problems?" I asked. "Or was it the combination of sex and marriage, or was it just my total poverty in the generosity department that you couldn't deal with?"

      She shook her head. "I don't really know anymore what it was. All the sex I have ever known, or wanted to become involved in and couldn't, has always been related to marriage in some way, or has been related to family by marriage. I was boxed in. I was owned. This marriage thing had dominated every sexual experience, though I was never married myself. Then, yesterday, when Heather brought this CSB question up, for me to ask you, she asked in passing, rather discreetly, if we human beings really marry each other for our sex, or whether these two aspects are separate issues. You know, I couldn't answer that simple question. She seems to think that the two are separate issues. But if this is so, where does this jealousy thing come from, and the power trips that literally turn some family members into prostitutes if they like it or not?"

      "Ah, that's something my friend the devil forgot to capitalize on in the story of the captain and the miner. You saw my presentation on the Internet, didn't you?"

      Anton nodded and smiled. "The devil probably realized that this jealousy and power trip project was fundamentally a flop. It never really worked. Sure, it destroyed a lot of relationships, but in the majority of cases it never really got off the ground in a big way."

      "Actually, Heather is right," I said. "Sex and marriage don't seem to be connected at all."

      "Your friend, Mr. Devil, obviously constructed this connection as a means for making his isolation project work," said Anton and began to laugh. "I think it helped to keep love restricted to the smallest possible confinement. That self-confinement project would probably never have gotten off the ground without the devil applying sex as an element for gumming up the works of love. It still does work that way, you know."

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Stories about War from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche