I did not let her finish. Hastily I pushed her through the entrance and we found ourselves in the lobby. At the controller's desk--the familiar, hanging, excitedly quivering cheeks, a group of Numbers around. They were quarreling about something, heads bending over the banisters on the second floor; they were running downstairs one by one. But about that later. I at once drew O-90 into the opposite, unoccupied corner and sat down with my back to the wall. I saw a dark large-headed shadow gliding back and forth over the sidewalk. I took out my notebook. O-90 in her chair was slowly sinking as if she were evaporating from under her unif, as if her body were thawing, as if only her empty unif were left, and empty eyes taking one into the blue emptiness. In a tired voice: "Why did you bring me here? You lied to me?" "No, not so loud! Look here! Do you see? Through the wall?" "Yes, I see a shadow." "He is always following me.... I cannot.... Do you understand? I cannot therefore ... I am going to write a few words to I-330. You take the note and go alone. I know he will remain here." Her body began again to take form and to move beneath the unif; on her face a faint sunrise, dawn. I put the note between her cold fingers, pressed her hand firmly and for the last time looked into her blue eyes. "Good-bye. Perhaps some day...." She freed her hand. Slightly bending over she slowly moved away, made two steps, turned around quickly and again we were side by side. Her lips were moving; with her lips and with her eyes she repeated some inaudible word. What an unbearable smile! What suffering! Then the bent-over human splinter went to the door; a bent-over little shadow beyond the wall; without turning around she went on faster, still faster.... I went to U-'s desk. With emotion filling up her indignant gills she said to me: "They have all gone crazy! He, for instance, is trying to assure me that he himself saw a naked man covered with hair near the Ancient House...." A voice from the group of empty raised heads; "Yes. I repeat it, yes." "Well, what do you think of that? Oh, what a delirium!" The word "delirium" came out of her mouth so full of conviction, so unbending, that I asked myself: "Perhaps it really was nothing but delirium, all that has been going on around me of late?" I glanced at my hairy hand and I remembered: "There are, undoubtedly, some drops of that blood of the sun and woods in you. That is why perhaps you...." No, fortunately it was not delirium; or no, _un_fortunately it was not delirium. RECORD THIRTY-THREE This without a Synopsis, Hastily, the Last _The day._ Quick, to the newspaper! perhaps there.... I read the paper with my eyes (exactly; my eyes now are like a pen, or like a counting machine which you hold and feel in your hands like a tool, something foreign, an instrument). In the newspaper on the first page, in large print: