Sixteen o’clock. I did not go for the supplementary walk; who knows, she might come now, when the sun is so noisily bright.

I am almost the only one in his room. Through the walls full of sunshine I see for a distance to the right and to the left and below strings of other rooms, repeating each other as if in a mirror, hanging in the air and empty. Only on the bluish stairway, striped by the golden ink of the sun, is seen rising a thin, gray shadow. Already I hear steps, and I see through the door and I feel a smile pasted to my face like a plaster. But it passed to another stairway and down. The click of the switchboard! I threw myself to that little white slit and⁠ ⁠… an unfamiliar male Number! (A consonant means a male Number.)

The elevator groaned and stopped. A big, slovenly, slanting forehead stood before me, and the eyes⁠ ⁠… They impressed me strangely; it seemed as if the man talked with his eyes which were deep under the forehead.