He, the amiable, kind, gentle doorkeeper, with the blue, typical eyes of a soldier, and with medals across his breast--he himself with his own hands would have opened the terrible door, opened it because he knew nothing.

Everybody would have smiled because they did not know anything.

"Oho!" he suddenly said aloud, and slowly removed his hands from his face.

Peering into the darkness, far ahead of him, with a fixed, strained look, he outstretched his hand just as slowly, felt the button on the wall and pressed it.

Then he arose, and without putting on his slippers, walked in his bare feet over the rug in the strange, unfamiliar bedroom, found the button of another lamp upon the wall and pressed it.