The four plain-clothes men stood awkwardly about the door which they had closed softly behind them. The two men with white cord loops across the breast of their uniforms went over to the table on the right and put down their black leather portfolios. They seemed to make themselves at home, and it angered me.
"What are these people doing here?" I asked Marie sharply.
She addressed the officer in Polish, and he answered curtly.
"It's a revision," she replied.
"A what?"
"A revision," she repeated.
I remember that I consciously kept my body motionless, and said to myself, "There is nothing surprising in this. There is nothing surprising in this." Everything had gone dark before my eyes. My heart seemed to stop beating.
Marie laughed and the sound of her cracking, high-pitched laugh came to me from far off.
The officer said something to her, and she stopped abruptly as though some one had clapped a hand over her mouth.
"What did he say?" I managed to articulate. My own language seemed to have deserted me.