Someone is standing at his side to lead him out.

The arrow polisher follows his guide at once. His body feels remote and peculiar. Outside the door he blinks a little, for there is the gilded official approaching the same door with a fearful, half-hidden man at his heels, someone who is hiding his face. The arrow polisher does not know him but stares at him so piercingly that the man cannot help raising his head as he passes. The two wretched men look into each other’s eyes and something occurs between them that is far beyond description. But it is there, naked and inexpressible, for one second, and then it is concealed again.

It is dark, and at the same time glaringly light because of the slender arrows.

The arrow polisher is standing outside once more. The last door has closed behind him. He was taken out by a different way from the one by which he came in. Or so he thinks. Now he is standing in the wide open space outside the stone wall, where the flashing arrows stream in from all directions. The centre is towering above him. The place is as desolate as if humanity had never been created. The arrow polisher stands as if he does not quite know whether he is awake or not. Has he been inside these walls?

He seizes the solution wildly: I’ve only been dreaming!

Everything that helped him and carried him along has abandoned him now. Now there is only himself. Then he gives a start and puts a hand into his inside pocket. The money is lying there. He has not been dreaming.

He starts walking in great haste so that nobody shall catch sight of him through the cracks in the doors, or notice that he is anywhere near this place. Then just as abruptly he changes to a leisurely, sauntering pace. Best to walk quite calmly and aimlessly.

But they must have seen me on my way in? They see everything. But they can’t know anything. After all, I walk about in the corridors all the time.

He tries to reassure himself, but without much success. He has been abandoned by the wave that carried him along, used and cast aside. The arrows glint around him, but he is going against them now, so there is no current to tempt him.

I was perfectly within my rights, after all!

He pauses, to add more weight to what he is about to say, so that he can hear his own voice: ‘It was more than my right, it was my duty.’

His voice echoes eerily in the deserted arrow corridor, so distorted that he fails to recognize it.

But there it comes again. Distorted.

‘Shame on everyone who shirks his duty in these terrible times.’

He listens to see if anyone will answer that he is justified.

Nobody does. The house and all its doors is silent and dark. The walls are hostile when one is in the arrow corridor.