With women as with men, Buchman was unpredictable. To one girl who left a conference to chase a man who proved rather different from what she had imagined, he simply said on her return, 'Never mind. There are plenty of better fish in the sea.' To another, who made a habit of such expeditions, he said, 'Look out. One day you'll do it once too often.' And one day she did - though many years later she turned up again, saying, 'It's marvellous to be back.'

He was delighted with a dashing young Swedish journalist who told a meeting at Caux that she thought she would in future use her lipstick to polish her red shoes. A couple of heavily-painted princesses happened to be sitting near him, and he remarked to them, not too softly, 'Do you hear? Do you hear?'

Buchman asked this journalist to look after a strikingly beautiful Swedish blonde - a girl who had done everything and been everywhere but who had changed dramatically after meeting him at Caux. 'She was very real,' says the journalist. 'That's why she was never afraid of Frank, and he loved meeting this very real, beautiful girl. There was a complete miracle. The outer light went off, the inner light went on. She started helping people. She went at it with real Swedish energy, fire surging like a river through Caux - a marvellous gift of God which cut through unreality whenever she met it.

'Then one day she collapsed, and wept and wanted to see Frank again. We were both invited to tea. She said, there among the teacups, "Frank, I'm empty. I have nothing more to give," and burst into tears.

' "You say you're empty," Frank said.

'"Yes."

' "Nothing more to give?"

' "No, Frank."

' "Wonderful," said Frank - and gave her a handkerchief to dry her tears.

'She stared at him amazed, with those wide, blue eyes.

''Then he said, "That's it. That is as it should be. 'Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy Cross I cling …'", and he went through the whole verse. "You see, you give everything and then it is Jesus who will do it for you. Jesus has done it and Jesus will do it."

'She sat back in her chair and said, "How wonderful."'

Buchman believed there was a definite connection between sexual purity and the extent to which people were available to be used by the Holy Spirit. Absolute purity, he maintained, referred to a wider realm than sex, but the way people handled that powerful instinct was important. It was not a question of rules or prohibitions, but of the fullest use of the energies of the affections. Kenaston Twitchell, a married man with three children, enunciated Buchman's philosophy on the subject: 'A single man or woman finds in the discipline and freedom of absolute purity complete satisfaction and the free use of every energy and affection. The married man and woman find exactly the same freedom in this redirection of instinct, along with whatever natural use of it God may direct... In that renaissance of character there comes a burning love for people that gives without demanding in return.'6

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