“Please ... listen.... Do you know ... Number I-330?”
The old man turned around, waved his hand in despair and stumbled farther away....
I returned home at dusk. On the west side the sky was twitching every second in a pale blue electric convulsion:—a subdued, heavy roar was proceeding from that direction. The roofs were covered with black charred sticks,—birds.
I lay down; and instantly like a heavy beast sleep came and stifled me....
RECORD THIRTY-EIGHT
I Don’t Know What Title—Perhaps the Whole Synopsis May Be Called a Cast-off Cigarette-butt.
I awoke. A bright glare painful to look at. I half closed my eyes. My head seemed filled with some caustic blue smoke. Everything was enveloped in fog and through the fog:
“But I did not turn on the light ... then how is it....”
I jumped up. At the table, leaning her chin on her hand and smiling, was I-330, looking at me.
She was at the very table at which I am now writing. Those ten or fifteen minutes are already behind me, cruelly twisted into a very firm spring. Yet it seems to me that the door closed after her only a second ago and that I could still overtake her and grasp her hand,—and that she might laugh out and say....