- Black offers to make some food. White says he doesn't need to eat, but Black goes ahead anyway, noting that once you break bread with someone, you moved to a new level of friendship.
- Black says that what's driving the Professor to suicide might be what he does believe, as opposed to what he doesn't.
- Then he asks White if he thinks about Jesus. White acts exasperated and asks how Black knows he (White) isn't Jewish.
- But White isn't Jewish. Black acts relieved, and when White asks if he has something against Jews, Black explains he's just pulling his chain.
- The point of all this, says Black, is that there isn't really such a thing as white people or black people or Jews or any other category—deep down at the bottom of the mine, there's only the pure gold, that "forever thing" (95) that forms the essence of everyone. It's what keeps people from jumping in front of the Sunset Limited.
- When White asks if this is the same thing as Jesus, Black says it basically is—it's just Jesus understood as the gold at the bottom of that mine.
- It's a Jesus who exists in and as humanity, since Black thinks that Jesus can't be every person without every person being Jesus. He admits this is sort of a heresy, but it's not as bad as believing people are no different than rocks, which is what White seems to believe.