.

.

.

It was impossible to live like this any longer.
And this, then, was to be the disaster that his old professor had foreseen for him: the crack in the wall, the crash, the cloud of dust.
And he could not understand how it had come about.

He felt that he himself was unchanged, that he was still there, the same man he had been five years ago, and that he was sitting stupidly by and letting some resolute offshoot of himself spoil his life for him.