That same evening she had a pink check on me. I stood before the switchboard and with hatred and tenderness I implored it to click and soon to show the number I-330 . I would jump out into the hall at every sound of the elevator. The door of the latter would open heavily. Pale, tall, blonde and dark they would come out of the elevator, and here and there curtains were falling.⁠ ⁠… But she was not there. She did not come. And it is quite possible that now, at this minute, as I write these lines, at twenty-two o’clock exactly, with her eyes closed, she is pressing her shoulder against somebody else in the same way and in the same way she may be asking someone: “Do you love me?” Whom? Who is he? That one with ray-like fingers or that thick-lipped, sprinkling R- ? Or S- ? S-