Part 4, pages 199-213 Summary

A few days later, the narrator is still sleeping in the family room, since the hall is unheated. The longshoreman has arranged to stay for a month. The narrator goes out to the hall to try and write and decides to write a one-act play set in the Middle Ages, centered around a prostitute who flaunts God and sins in the Church. In the circumstances, he is having difficulty with his writing and goes out for a walk. He runs into Queeny and tells him he left the bookkeeping position because he wrote down a wrong number. Queeny assumes that he was embezzling money, and the narrator is offended. As they're talking, a woman walks by wearing a red dress. She's with a man. Suddenly, the narrator recognizes her: Ylayali.

The man is nicknamed The Duke, and he's reputed...