As before she seemed somehow to speak for me and through me, developing to the end my own thoughts. But there was something so morbid in her tone that I could not refrain ... with an effort I drew out a "No." "No," I said, "You, you are mocking...." She burst out laughing loudly, too loudly. Swiftly, in a second, she laughed herself to some unseen edge, stumbled and fell over.... Silence. She stood up, put her hands upon my shoulders and looked into me for a long while. Then she pulled me toward her and everything seemed to have disappeared save her sharp, hot lips.... "Good-bye." The words came from afar, from above, and reached me not at once, only after a minute, perhaps two minutes later. "Why ... why 'good-bye'?" "You have been ill, have you not? Because of me you have committed crimes. Has not all this tormented you? And now you have the Operation to look forward to. You will be cured of me. And that means--good-bye." "No!" I cried. A pitilessly sharp black triangle on a white background. "What? Do you mean that you don't want happiness?" My head was breaking into pieces; two logical trains collided and crawled upon each other, rattling and smothering.... "Well, I am waiting. You must choose; the Operation and hundred per-cent happiness, or...." "I cannot ... without you.... I must not ... without you...." I said, or perhaps I only thought, I am not sure which, but I-330 heard. "Yes, I know," she said. Then, her hands still on my shoulders and her eyes not letting my eyes go, "Then ... until tomorrow. Tomorrow at twelve. You remember?" "No, it was postponed for a day. Day-after-tomorrow!" "So much the better for us. At twelve, day-after-tomorrow!" I walked alone in the dusky street. The wind was whirling, carrying, driving me like a piece of paper; fragments of the leaden sky were soaring, soaring--they had to soar through the infinite for another day or two.... Unifs of Numbers were brushing my sides,--yet I was walking alone. It was clear to me that all were saved but that there was no salvation for me. For I _do not want_ salvation.... RECORD THIRTY-TWO I Do Not Believe Tractors A Little Human Splinter Do you believe that _you will die_? Oh, yes, "Man is mortal. I am a man, consequently...." No, not that; I know that; you know it. But I ask: has it ever happened that you _actually believed_ it? Believed definitely, believed not with your reason but with your _body_, that you actually felt that some day those fingers which now hold this page, will become yellow, icy?... No, of course you cannot believe this. That is why you have not jumped from the tenth floor to the pavement before now, that is why you eat, turn over these pages, shave, smile, write.