He sat without moving, the pile of bedclothes on his left, at the head of the couch, his eyes staring blankly in front of him, seeing and not seeing. One thought darkened his mind: ‘Something’s going to happen in a minute, something’s going to happen in a minute …’ Empty bottles, glasses, the coffeepot, the leftover food lay scattered over the table; the empty tin of sprats was at the edge nearest Gurdweill, demanding his attention as if it were a symbol of something or other. The air was saturated with cigarette smoke and the sour smell of alcohol in the process of being digested. ‘Perhaps he’s already asleep, and then …’ He wanted him to be asleep, and then again he wanted him not to be asleep, so that what had to happen would happen in full. Unconsciously he anticipated Thea’s actions and movements and, as it were, guided them. Without looking at her as she stood opposite him, on the other side of the table, he saw her taking off her petticoat and hanging it over the back of the chair. Then she took off her bodice, cupped her breasts in her hands, glanced at the bed, and let them go again, smiling a twisted, vicious smile. He saw all this from a distance, as if it were taking place in the house across the street; he saw it clearly enough and yet, at the same time, as through the definite barrier of two windows and the width of the street in between, which prevented him from making the least move to stop her. Thea stood there for a moment completely naked. She drained the dregs of the wine in one of the glasses. Then she took a last puff of the fag end of her cigarette, which she took from the table, and crushed it out in the ashtray — all of which she did naked. Her movements seemed to conform to some regular routine. Now she took her nightgown, which she had previously placed in readiness on the side of the bed, an orange nightgown still folded from the laundry, and slipped it over her head. She cast a sidelong glance at Gurdweill, smiling the satanic smile that in itself might have driven a man to murder, took a step towards the table, bent down, and blew out the lamp. The flame flared up, agitating the air in the room, and died. In an instant they were blind. A shudder ran through the man on the couch, but he went on sitting as if turned to stone. The silence increased seventy-fold. In it the light tread of bare feet could be heard, like the scampering of a mouse, and a faint, abortive creak from the bed, more like the abstract idea of a sound than the sound itself. There was a soft rustle, a turning over in the bed — imperceptible tremors that Gurdweill nevertheless picked up quite distinctly, and after that once more a moment, the merest fraction of a moment, of silence, broken into, as into an empty frame, by the distant whistle of a train. Gurdweill sat like a man imprisoned in an iron mould made to measure for his body. His heart beat in every part of him, his arms, his legs, his skull, and seemed about to break free and detach itself from the still body at any moment, to roll like dull thunder through the darkness of the night until it disappeared forever. And now his ear caught a smothered sound from the bed. Something strange, full of mystery, oppressive and terrifying as death, burst into the room and gave rise to a movement that lasted an eternity, that would never stop. The body of the man sitting on the couch was suddenly drained of the marrow of its life by a vast, invisible hand. His body instantly grew very light, as if it were made of air, expanding and overflowing its boundaries and merging with the air of the rest of the world. His heart stopped. He lost his balance and fell over backwards on the couch.