“Quietly, metallically, distinctly, do the thoughts” … etc. I felt her brownish-pink cheeks twitching and coming closer and closer to me. Suddenly I felt in my hands her firm, dry, even slightly prickling fingers.
“Give, give this to me please. I shall have it phonographed and make the children learn it by heart. Not only your Venerians need all this, but we ourselves right now, tomorrow, day-after-tomorrow.”
She glanced around and said in a very low voice:
“Have you heard, they say that on the Day of Unanimity—”
I sprang to my feet.
“What? What do they say? What—on the Day of Unanimity?”
The coziness of my room, its very walls, seemed to have vanished. I felt myself thrown outside, where the tremendous, shaggy wind was tossing about and where the slanting clouds of dusk were descending lower and lower. …
U- boldly and firmly grasped me by the shoulders. I even noticed how her fingers, responding to my emotion, trembled slightly.
“Sit down, dear, and don’t be upset. They say many things; must we believe them all? Moreover, if only you need me, I shall be near you on that day. I shall leave the schoolchildren with someone else and I shall stay with you, for you, dear, you too are a child and you need. …”
“No, no!” (I raised my hands in protest). “Not for anything! You really think then that I am a child and that I cannot do without a. … Oh, no! Not for anything in the world.” (I must confess I had other plans for that day!)
She smiled. The wording of that smile apparently was: “Oh, what a stubborn, what a stubborn boy!” She sat down, eyelids lowered. Her