The arrow polisher coughs.

Now Stig is right beside him. The arrow polisher looks at this exhausted man with intense longing. Turn your face towards me and accept me as one of you, he wishes.

But Stig does not feel like doing so. He merely looks straight in front of him and hurries past. As if not a soul were in sight.

A cry tries to force itself out: Stig! Wait a moment! Don’t walk past me like this! But it comes to nothing. He hasn’t the courage. He looks at Stig’s back and dare not call out after a back like that.

But mists from hell rise up and dim his sight, and before they have drifted away again Stig has vanished. Stig is never seen for long; you catch sight of him when he is forced to pass along lighted corridors, and that’s all. If you wish to talk to him you have to be quick on your feet.

Why didn’t I call after him?

The arrow polisher is left with many conflicting emotions, but it is his disappointment that stings most.

Why didn’t I greet him ? What reason have I to be afraid of him? I haven’t done him any harm.

And why should he behave like that to me? He knew very well he was hurting me, I could see he did. Didn’t even look up as he hurried past. And we see each other so often in the corridors.

He stands smarting with shame and sorrow.

And what does it matter if I stand here polishing the arrows? he thinks. I’m not taking part in anything on that account. I wouldn’t take part in what they’re doing, for all the world. Stig must realize that, so he needn’t cut me for that reason.

He gives a start: an eye is inspecting him from a chink in a door. It feels like a tiny, quickly paralysing snake-bite. He tries to find out where it came from, but it has gone. The chink in the door has gone. Everything is closed. No eyes anywhere. Has he imagined it?

What a dreadful house this is, he thinks, shaking off his shock as best he can, seizing his cloth.

He knows that if Stig were to come back again in a moment he would take up the same expectant position, waiting for a little greeting from this man whom the house holds in such esteem.

Then something happens.

A giant of a man with arrows shining on his jacket is coming towards him down the corridor. He walks stiff and erect, keeping to the middle of the corridor, exactly equidistant from the walls.

The arrow polisher sees him coming from far away and straightens himself up as much as he can. That doesn’t matter after all, he thinks, since I don’t really belong to them; it’s just that I haven’t had the opportunity to demonstrate it or to tell anyone about it. It’s just that I need this work, so that Frank and Freda can live decently and go to school, so that they can be trained for the time when they must stand on their own feet. No other work that I could get would have paid me so well. But I don’t belong because of it.