It was like a problem whose answer he knew on paper, yet whose solution he was unable to grasp.

He was far beyond horror.

He had sunk through the thin surface of that, now moved in a region where the feet and the fear of white walls were real, living things, things he must accept.

Only far inside his soul a little fire leaped and cried that something was pulling him down, trying to get him inside a door and slam it behind him.

After that door was slammed there would be only footfalls and white buildings in the moonlight, and perhaps he would be one of the footfalls.
During the five or ten minutes he waited in the shadow of the fence, there was somehow this fire...