“Absurd!” he cried. “This is the worst of trying to tell.⁠ ⁠… Here you all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another, excellent appetites, and temperature normal⁠—you hear⁠—normal from year’s end to year’s end. And you say, Absurd! Absurd be⁠—exploded! Absurd! My dear boys, what can you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness had just flung overboard a pair of new shoes! Now I think of it, it is amazing I did not shed tears. I am, upon the whole, proud of my fortitude. I was cut to the quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me. Oh, yes, I heard more than enough. And I was right, too. A voice. He was very little more than a voice. And I heard⁠—him⁠—it⁠—this voice⁠—other voices⁠—all of them were so little more than voices⁠—and the memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of sense. Voices, voices⁠—even the girl herself⁠—now⁠—”

He was silent for a long time.