“What do you suppose the difference might be, between being fine and being quite all right?”

“I’m not sure I see a difference.”

“You’re not sure you see? Could you say that again, please?”

A flash of alarm—can you say it exactly as you did before? Did you say “that” you saw a difference or only: you saw a difference? Didn’t – you didn’t see a difference!

“I’m not sure I see a difference.”

The administrator is quiet for a while. He is no longer swiveling his head, but sits looking straight ahead, his palms on his thighs, hidden beneath his greatcoat.

“Perhaps there is none,” he says at last. “The question is unimportant, provided that you meant the same thing by fine as I did by quite all right.”

The administrator remains quiet for a long time. Waves of golden light flash over the silent park.

“How might we go about determining that?” he asks, musingly. There is nothing musing, or even particularly describable, about his manner. “Do you remember what you meant, when I asked you if you were quite all right, and you answered that you were fine?”

“...I meant...”

The man is breathing through his mouth, fighting an impulse to gasp for breath, his eyes riveted on the empty air where his left foot used to be.

“...I meant that, I had nothing out of the ordinary to report.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary? I wonder if that’s possible!”

There was a note of derision in the administrator’s voice. The man crumples.

“As if this,” the administrator actually gestures with his hand, waving it a little toward the park, the river, the glass panes, “were all merely a matter of course!”

“I meant,” the man says, recklessly, no longer trusting his reasoning, “to refer only to my own condition.”

“Your own condition being at the time nothing out of the ordinary? And that’s what you mean by fine? And that’s what you say when you are asked if you are quite all right? That your condition at the time is nothing out of the ordinary?”

“I saw at the time no difference between affirming that I was quite all right and affirming that I was fine.”

“And so, you likewise failed to see at the time what it would mean to claim that you, or—excuse me—your condition,” he added with disdain, “were in perfect accord with the ordinary?”

“M-my— my oversight is clear to me now— I see, now, that I did not think sufficiently clearly about the assertion that nothing was out of the ordinary with me, when what I meant was that, so far as I knew, there was nothing unusual... unusual happening... ”

“Happening... ?”

“I was not... at the time... aware... of anything unusual... of there being anything unusual about me at the time.”

“And what, do you suppose, might be unusual about you?”