Where did he go, your father?' 'Africa.' 'What for?' 'To shoot lions, of course.' 'What on Earth <i>for</i>?' said Mrs. Willow blankly. 'Some pe… - Shirley Jackson

All I could think of when I got a look at the place from the outside was what fun it would be to stand out there and watch it burn down.

All I want is to be cherished, she thought, and here I am talking gibberish with a selfish man.

Poor things, she thought - do they have to spend all this energy just to surround me? It seemed pitiful that these automatons should be created and wasted, never knowing more than a minor fragment of the pattern in which they were involved, to learn and follow through insensitively a tiny step in the great dance which was seen close up as the destruction of Natalie, and far off, as the end of the world.

They had all earned their deaths, Natalie thought, by a job well done - the woman in the seat ahead who had never needed a face, had perhaps been given for her part only the back of a head and a dark cloth coat collar, the man in the seat next to Natalie, a full-dress part, even to the watchchain and the grimy shirt collar - had not this same man, as a matter of fact, been close to Natalie in the station, memorising her face so that although when next they met she would not know him, he would be able to identify her, winking and gesturing with his head to the others, murmuring perhaps to the bus driver, 'That one, there.