“It was absolutely clear that this contrast, this impassable abyss, between the things of today and of years ago—”
“But why impassable?” (What bright, sharp teeth!) “One might throw a bridge over that abyss. Please imagine: a drum battalion, rows,—all this existed before and consequently—”
“Oh, yes, it is clear,” I exclaimed.
It was a remarkable intersection of thoughts. She said almost in the same words the things I wrote down before the walk! Do you understand? Even the thoughts! It is because nobody is one, but one of. We are all so much alike—
“Are you sure?” I noticed her brows which rose to the temples in an acute angle,—like the sharp corners of an X. Again I was confused, casting a glance to the right, then to the left. To my right—she, slender, abrupt, resistantly flexible like a whip, I-330 (I saw her number now).
To my left, O-, totally different, made all of circles with a child-like dimple on her wrist; and at the very end of our row, an unknown he-Number, double-curved like the letter S. We were all so different from one another....
The one to my right, I-330, apparently caught my confused eye, for she said with a sigh, “Yes, alas!”
I don’t deny that this exclamation was quite in place, but again there was something in her face or in her voice....
With an abruptness unusual for me, I said, “Why ‘alas’? Science is developing and if not now, then within fifty or one hundred years—”
“Even the noses will—”