At last! At last she was nearby, here, and what did it matter where "here" was? I saw the familiar saffron-yellow silk, the smile-bite, the eyes with their curtains drawn.... My lips quivered, so did my hands and knees, and I had a most stupid thought: "Vibrations make sounds. Shivering must make a sound. Why then don't I hear it?" Her eyes opened for me widely. I entered into them. "I could not ... any longer!... Where have you been?... Why?..." I was unable to tear my eyes away from her for a second, and I talked as if in a delirium, fast and incoherently, or perhaps I only thought without speaking out: "A shadow ... behind me. I died. And from the cupboard.... Because that doctor of yours ... speaks with his scissors.... I have a soul ... incurable ... and I must walk...." "An incurable soul? My poor boy!" I-330 laughed. She covered me with the sparkles of her laughter; my delirium left me. Everywhere around her little laughs were sparkling! How good it was! The doctor reappeared from around the turn, the wonderful, magnificent, thinnest doctor. "Well?" He was already beside her. "Oh, nothing, nothing. I shall tell you later. He got here by accident. Tell them that I shall be back in about a quarter of an hour." The doctor slid around the corner. She lingered. The door closed with a heavy thud. Then slowly, very slowly, piercing my heart with a sharp sweet needle, I-330 pressed against me with her shoulder and then with her arm, with her whole body, and we walked away as if fused into one. I do not remember now where we turned into darkness; in the darkness we walked up some endless stairway in silence. I did not see but I knew, I knew that she walked as I did, with closed eyes, blind, her head thrown a little backward, biting her lips and listening to the music, that is to say, to my almost audible tremor. I returned to consciousness in one of the innumerable nooks in the courtyard of the Ancient House. There was a fence of earth with naked stone ribs and yellow teeth of walls half fallen to pieces. She opened her eyes and said, "Day-after-tomorrow at sixteen." She was gone. Did all this really happen? I do not know. I shall learn day-after-tomorrow. One real sign remains: on my right hand the skin has been rubbed from the tips of three fingers. But today, on the _Integral_ the Second Builder assured me that he saw me touch the polishing wheel with those very same fingers. Perhaps I did. It is quite probable. I don't know. I don't know anything. RECORD EIGHTEEN Logical Debris Wounds and Plaster Never Again