And I shall never see them again, thinks the man sitting numbly at his desk.

When Frank called to him he shrank down in his seat and felt a fever pulsating through the cold in his body. And I knew it really before he told me. And yet that burning sensation came.

And now it will come soon, he thinks. He lacks both the will and the ability to leave the room. It shall find him here. He has a deep need that it should. It must be on its way now.

A clock ticks and hours pass, but time has no meaning for him. The clock fashions the hours, but he does not use them. He looks at the whorls made by Freda in the dust and remembers her, but there are other matters he has to think about now. He must prepare himself in whatever way he can.

Will Frank and Freda be coming back soon? It would be better for them to stay away. They must stay away! He must come before they get home. The arrow polisher is in such tumult that everything he looks at is moving in waves around him. For now he knows it is nearly time. He seems to be drawing the other man to him, the one who is on his way here, and for whom he is longing in the midst of his terror.

And then he is there. The outer door opens. Did he knock? There was no one to answer or to open it, in any case. That does not stop him. Now he is standing out there. Everything drops out of the arrow polisher’s hands. He is no more than the trembling meeting-place for what is to be accomplished.

His door opens and a man with a white face is standing in the doorway. It is Peter. The arrow polisher knows who he is. He has seen him with Stig.

Peter stands there, austere, pale and silent.

The arrow polisher feels at one with him in an extraordinary way. He has drawn Peter here, known he was coming, accepted and dreaded it and prepared himself. Now that he is standing there it is as it must be. Between the spurts of fear that pass through him there is this thing that wants it, wants it.

‘Well, here I am,’ says Peter. ‘We find out about these things.’

The arrow polisher tries to reply, but all he achieves is an open mouth. So he nods instead.

Peter continues, quietly, with sorrow in his voice, marked by his attempt to cleanse his mind of base motives before this mission: ‘So you were condemned at once. The order has been given that you are to die.’

The arrow polisher nods again. He cannot feel his body. But now it has come, and he wants it, he wants it. It is the only solution.

Peter is still standing there. Drops of sweat are shining on his forehead. He is trying to stand quite still, and with his mind prepared. The sweat is proof of what it is costing him.