Towards evening my yellow-vested neighbor, emerging from his meditations and continuing to shake his head, answers my questions of the morning:
"They can't wash his hands—it's embedded."
A little later that day I became restless. I lifted my arm—it was clothed in white linen. I hardly knew my emaciated hand—that shadow stranger! But I recognized the identity disk on my wrist. Ah, then! that went with me into the depths of hell!
For hours on end my head remains empty and sleepless, and there are hosts of things that I perceive badly, which are, and then are not. I have answered some questions. When I say, Yes, it is a sigh that I utter, and only that. At other times, I seem again to be half-swept away into pictures of tumored plains and mountains crowned. Echoes of these things vibrate in my ears, and I wish that some one would come who could explain the dreams.
* * * * * *
Strange footsteps are making the floor creak, and stopping there. I open my eyes. A woman is before me. Ah! the sight of her throws me into infinite confusion! She is the woman of my vision. Was it true, then? I look at her with wide-open eyes. She says to me:
"It's me."
Then she bends low and adds softly:
"I'm Marie; you're Simon."
"Ah!" I say. "I remember."