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And...everyday he went down the same road like an automated machine, entered the big gate, threaded his way through the narrow way where the shaking noise of the rotary machines and foul-smelling sweat of the workmen mingled in the building, nodded to the people in the offices, plodded up the long narrow staircase, and finally entered his office; but this room which opened on the east and on the south was indeed intolerably hot because of the strong afternoon sunlight. Added to this he felt uncomfortable on finding white dust covering the table as the apprentice was lazy and did not clean the room. Sitting down on a chair, he had a smoke, and then got up to take out a thick book on statistics, a map, a guidebook and a book on geography, and then calmly began to work from the place where he had left off on the previous day. However, he found it difficult to continue writing as his mind had been hazy these last two or three days. He would stop writing after one line and ponder over what had been passing through his mind. Again he wrote one line, and stopped, and so on--writing and stopping. In the meantime the thoughts which flashed through his mind were fragmentary, violent, precipitous, and full of desperate elements. By some chance association, he recalled Hauptmann's Einsame Menschen. Before things had turned out this way he had thought that he might use this play as a daily lesson for her. He wanted to teach her about the mental state and sorrow of Johannes Vockerat. Although it was three years ago when he had read this play, at a time when he had not the slightest notion that she even existed, he had been a lonely man since those days. Not that he was comparing himself with Johannes, but he was deeply moved by Johannes' love for
