I noticed my papers on the table; the last two pages of my record of yesterday; they were in the place where I left them the night before. If only she knew what I wrote there! Although I did not care after all. Now it was only history; it was the ridiculously far off distance like an image through a reversed opera-glass. "Yes," I said, "a while ago, while passing through the avenue, I saw a man walking ahead of me. His shadow stretched along the pavement and think of it! his shadow was luminous! I think, more than that, I am absolutely certain that tomorrow all shadows will disappear. Not a shadow from any person or any thing! The sun will be shining through everything." She, gently and earnestly: "You are a dreamer! I should not allow my children in school to talk that way." She told me something about the children; that they were all led in one herd to the Operation; that it was necessary to bind them afterward with ropes; and that one must love pitilessly, "yes, pitilessly," and that she thought she might finally decide to.... She smoothed out the grayish-blue fold of the unif that fell between her knees, swiftly pasted her smiles all over me and went out. Fortunately the sun did not stop today. The sun was running. It was already sixteen o'clock.... I was knocking at the door, my heart was knocking.... "Come in!" I threw myself upon the floor near her chair, to embrace her limbs, to lift my head upward and look into her eyes, first into one then into the other, and in each of them to see the reflection of myself in wonderful captivity.... There beyond the wall it looked stormy, there the clouds were leaden,--let them be! My head was overcrowded with impetuous words, and I was speaking aloud, and flying with the sun I knew not where.... No, now we know where we are flying; planets were following me, planets sparkling with flame and populated with fiery, singing flowers and mute planets, blue ones where rational stones were unified into one organized society, and planets which like our own earth had reached already the apex of one hundred per-cent happiness. Suddenly from above: "And don't you think that at the apex are, precisely, _stones_ unified into an organized society?" The triangle grew sharper and sharper, darker and darker. "Happiness ... well?... Desires are tortures, are they not? It is clear therefore, that happiness is where there are no longer any desires, not a single desire any more. What an error, what an absurd prejudice it was, that formerly we would mark happiness with the sign 'plus'! No, absolute happiness must be marked 'minus,'--divine minus!" I remember I stammered unintelligibly: "Absolute zero!--minus 273°C." "Minus 273°--exactly! A somewhat cool temperature. But does it not prove that we are at the summit?"