"Absolute zero!--minus 273°C."
"Minus 273°--exactly! A somewhat cool temperature. But does it not
prove that we are at the summit?"
As before she seemed somehow to speak for me and through me,
developing to the end my own thoughts. But there was something so
morbid in her tone that I could not refrain ... with an effort I
drew out a "No."
"No," I said, "You, you are mocking...."
She burst out laughing loudly, too loudly. Swiftly, in a second,
she laughed herself to some unseen edge, stumbled and fell over....
Silence.
She stood up, put her hands upon my shoulders and looked into me for
a long while. Then she pulled me toward her and everything seemed to
have disappeared save her sharp, hot lips....
"Good-bye."
The words came from afar, from above, and reached me not at once,
only after a minute, perhaps two minutes later.
"Why ... why 'good-bye'?"
"You have been ill, have you not? Because of me you have committed
crimes. Has not all this tormented you? And now you have the
Operation to look forward to. You will be cured of me. And that
means--good-bye."
"No!" I cried.
A pitilessly sharp black triangle on a white background.
"What? Do you mean that you don't want happiness?"
My head was breaking into pieces; two logical trains collided and
crawled upon each other, rattling and smothering....
"Well, I am waiting. You must choose; the Operation and hundred
per-cent happiness, or...."
"I cannot ... without you.... I must not ... without you...." I
said, or perhaps I only thought, I am not sure which, but I-330
heard.
"Yes, I know," she said. Then, her hands still on my shoulders and
her eyes not letting my eyes go, "Then ... until tomorrow. Tomorrow
at twelve. You remember?"
"No, it was postponed for a day. Day-after-tomorrow!"
"So much the better for us. At twelve, day-after-tomorrow!"
I walked alone in the dusky street. The wind was whirling,
carrying, driving me like a piece of paper; fragments of the leaden
sky were soaring, soaring--they had to soar through the infinite for
another day or two....
Unifs of Numbers were brushing my sides,--yet I was walking alone.
It was clear to me that all were saved but that there was no
salvation for me. For I _do not want_ salvation....