“About my letter, did you receive it? Yes? I must know your answer, I must—today.”
I shrugged my shoulders. I enjoyed looking into her blue eyes which were filled with tears as if she were the guilty one. I lingered over my answer. With pleasure I pricked her:
“Answer? Well. … You are right. Undoubtedly. In everything.”
“Then …” (She tried to cover the minute tremor with a smile but it did not escape me.) “Well, all right. I shall … I shall leave you at once.”
Yet she remained drooping over the table. Drooping eyelids, drooping arms and legs. The pink check of the other was still on the table. I quickly opened this manuscript, We , and with its pages I covered the check, trying to hide it from myself, rather than from O- .
“See, here, I am still busy writing. Already 101 pages! Something quite unexpected comes out in this writing.”
In a voice, in a shadow of a voice, “And do you remember … how the other day I … on the seventh page … and it dropped. …”
The tiny blue saucers filled to the borders; silently and rapidly the tears ran down her cheeks. And suddenly, like the dropping of the tears—rushing forth—words:
“I cannot … I shall leave you in a moment. I shall never again … and I don’t care. … Only I want, I must have a child! From you! Give me a child and I will leave. I will!”
I saw she was trembling all over beneath her unif, and I felt … I too, would soon … would. … I put my hands behind my back and smiled.
“What? You desire to go under the Machine of the Well-Doer?”