She was somewhere behind me, near the closet door. The unif was rustling, falling. I was listening, _all_ listening. I remembered,--no, it glistened in my mind for one hundredth of a second,--I once had to calculate the curve of a street membrane of a new type. (These membranes are handsomely decorated and are placed on all the avenues, registering all street conversations for the Bureau of Guardians.) I remembered a rosy concave, trembling membrane,--a strange being consisting of one organ only, an ear. I was at that moment such a membrane. Now the "click" of the snap-button at her collar, at her breast, and ... lower. The glassy silk rustled over her shoulders and knees, over the floor. I heard--and this was clearer than actual seeing--I heard how one foot stepped out of the grayish-blue heap of silk, then the other.... Soon I'd hear the creak of the bed and ... The tensely stretched membrane trembled and registered the silence,--no, the sharp hammer-like blows of the heart against the iron bars and endless pauses between beats. And I heard, saw, how she, behind me hesitated for a second, thinking. The door of the closet.... It slammed; again silk ... silk.... "Well, all right." I turned around. She was dressed in a saffron-yellow dress of an ancient style. This was a thousand times worse than if she had not been dressed at all. Two sharp points, through the thin tissue glowing with rosiness, two burning embers piercing through ashes; two tender, round knees.... She was sitting in a low armchair. In front of her on a small square table, I noticed a bottle filled with something poisonously green and two small glasses on thin legs. In the corner of her mouth she had a very thin paper tube; she was ejecting smoke formed by the burning of that ancient smoking substance whose name I do not now remember. The membrane was still vibrating. Within the sledge-hammer was pounding the red-hot iron bars of my chest. I heard distinctly every blow of the hammer, and ... what if she too heard it? But she continued to produce smoke very calmly; calmly she looked at me; and nonchalantly she flicked ashes on the pink check! With as much self-control as possible I asked, "If you still feel that way, why did you have me assigned to you? And why did you make me come here?" As if she had not heard at all, she poured some of the green liquid from the bottle into a small glass and sipped it. "Wonderful liqueur! Want some?" Then I understood; alcohol! Like lightning there came to memory what I saw yesterday: the stony hand of the Well-Doer, the unbearable blade of the electric ray; there on the Cube, the head thrown backward, the stretched-out body! I shivered. "Please listen," I said, "You know, do you not, that any one who poisons himself with nicotine, more particularly with alcohol, is severely treated by the United State?" Dark brows raised high to the temples, the sharp mocking triangle.