Activity

Then I descended the stairs: The descent was more tiring than the ascent had been, and not even that had been easy. Oh, how many business calls come to nothing, and yet one must keep going.

[...] I talked on as if I had still some prospect of putting everything right again by my talk, by the advantageous offers I made--I was myself alarmed by the concessions I granted, concessions that had not even been asked for. [...]

[...] But back I cannot go, this waste of time, this admission of having been on the wrong track would be unbearable for me. What? Run downstairs in this brief, hurried life accompanied as it is by that impatient droning? Impossible. The time allotted to you is so short that if you lose one second …