I’d like to have a good talk to you first, get to know you better.…”

“All right, I’ll tell you all about myself tomorrow. But, good Lord, the whole thing is just like a miracle! Where am I? Tell me, aren’t you glad you weren’t angry with me, as some other women might well have been? Only two minutes, and you’ve made me happy for ever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you’ve reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts. Perhaps there are moments when I … But I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. You shall know everything, everything.…”

“All right, I agree. I think you’d better start first.”

“Very well.”

“Goodbye!”

“Goodbye!”

And we parted. I walked about all night. I couldn’t bring myself to go home. I was so happy! Till tomorrow!

SECOND NIGHT

“Well, so you have survived, haven’t you?” she said to me, laughing and pressing both my hands.

“I’ve been here for the last two hours. You don’t know what I’ve been through today!”

“I know, I know—but to business. Do you know why I’ve come? Not to talk a lot of nonsense as we did yesterday. You see, we must be more sensible in future. I thought about it a lot yesterday.”

“But how? How are we to be more sensible? Not that I have anything against it. But, really, I don’t believe anything more sensible has ever happened to me than what’s happening to me at this moment.”

“Oh? Well, first of all, please don’t squeeze my hands like that. Secondly, let me tell you I’ve given a lot of thought to you today.”

“Have you? Well, and what decision have you come to?”

“What decision? Why, that we ought to start all over again. For today I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t know you at all, that I’ve behaved like a child, like a silly girl, and of course in the end I blamed my own good heart for everything. I mean, I finished up, as everybody always does when they start examining their own motives, by passing a vote of thanks to myself. And so, to correct my mistake, I’ve made up my mind to find out all about you to the last detail. But as there’s no one I can ask about you, you’ll have to tell me everything yourself. Everything, absolutely everything! To begin with, what sort of man are you? Come on, start, please! Tell me the story of your life.”

“The story of my life?” I cried, thoroughly alarmed. “But who told you there was such a story? I’m afraid there isn’t any.”

“But how did you manage to live, if there is no story?” she interrupted me, laughing.

“Without any stories whatsoever! I have lived, as they say, entirely independently. I mean by myself. Do you know what it means to live by oneself?”

“How do you mean by yourself? Do you never see anyone at all?”

“Why, no. I see all sorts of people, but I’m alone all the same.”

“Don’t you ever talk to anyone?”

“Strictly speaking, never.”

“But who are you? Please explain. But wait: I think I can guess. You’ve probably got a grandmother like me. She’s blind, my granny is, and she never lets me go out anywhere, so that I’ve almost forgotten how to talk to people. And when I behaved badly about two years ago and she saw that there was no holding me, she called me in and pinned my dress to hers—and since then we’ve sat pinned to one another like that for days and days. She knits a stocking, blind though she is, and I have to sit beside her sewing or reading a book to her.