to find an arithmetical expression for it. Somehow I was confused; with a somewhat hazy mind, I tried logically to motivate my laughter.
“It was absolutely clear that this contrast, this impassable abyss, between the things of today and of years ago—”
“But why impassable?” (What bright, sharp teeth!) “One might throw a bridge over that abyss. Please imagine: a drum battalion, rows—all this existed before and consequently—”
“Oh, yes, it is clear,” I exclaimed.
It was a remarkable intersection of thoughts. She said almost in the same words the things I wrote down before the walk! Do you understand? Even the thoughts! It is because nobody is one , but one of . We are all so much alike—
“Are you sure?” I noticed her brows which rose to the temples in an acute angle—like the sharp corners of an X. Again I was confused, casting a glance to the right, then to the left. To my right—she, slender, abrupt, resistantly flexible like a whip, I-330 (I saw her number now). To my left, O- , totally different, made all of circles with a childlike dimple on her wrist; and at the very end of our row, an unknown he-Number, double-curved like the letter S. We were all so different from one another. …
The one to my right, I-330 , apparently caught my confused eye, for she said with a sigh, “Yes, alas!”
I don’t deny that this exclamation was quite in place, but again there was something in her face or in her voice. …
With an abruptness unusual for me, I said, “Why ‘alas’? Science is developing and if not now, then within fifty or one hundred years—”
“Even the noses will—”