He wandered aimlessly. The sun was setting. A special form of misery had begun to oppress him of late. There was nothing poignant, nothing acute about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity about it; it brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden misery, a foretaste of an eternity "on a square yard of space." Towards evening this sensation usually began to weigh on him more heavily.
It must be the top drawer," he reflected. "So she carries the keys in a pocket on the right. All in one bunch on a steel ring… . And there's one key there, three times as big as all the others, with deep notches; that can't be the key of the chest of drawers … then there must be some other chest or strong-box … that's worth knowing. Strong-boxes always have keys like that … but how degrading it all is.
Something new and unexpected, something hitherto unknown and undreamt of, had taken place in him. He did not so much understand with his mind as feel instinctively with the full force of his emotions that he could never again communicate with these people in a great gush of feeling, as he had just now, or in any way whatever.
I like it when people lie! Lying is man’s only privilege over all other organisms. If you lie—you get to the truth! Lying is what makes me a man. Not one truth has ever been reached without first lying fourteen times or so, maybe a hundred and fourteen, and that’s honorable in its way; well, but we can’t even lie with our own minds!