Winslow Homer The Red Canoe painting

Winslow Homer The Red Canoe paintingDaniel Ridgway Knight Daniel Ridgway Knight paintingHorace Vernet The lion hunter painting
I was too sobered by the dilation of the iris-shuttered port, like a great black pupil, to reply. I tried to think of My Ladyship, as appropriate to what might be my last moments on campus -- but my mind and heart were blank as my ID-card; if Anastasia's image appeared there at all, I regarded it without emotion. Nothing happened. Bray handed me my card, which had been returned into the console-cup in lieu of reply-cards, I presumed, we having made no inquiries. He pointed out as I pursed it that the exit-port was likewise impregnable; I had, alas, no choice but to reply to WESCAC's questions -- always assuming I was not EATen before they were posed. Naturally I was free to make deliberately "false" replies, to demonstrate either my contempt for the examiner or my conviction that Failure is Passage; he supposed too I might choose to push no buttons at all. He could not but imagine, however, that in that event I would remain in the Belly forever.
If I felt chagrin at this hitch in my plans, or suspected Bray of tricking me after all into changing them, or wondered how he himself would leave the Belly, if I chose not to -- I can't recall it. Neither did I care, as before, whether he came with me or escaped by some