The encounter with Anna, who is openly stealing a collection of poems by Bertolt Brecht in the bookshop where he works, hits Paul like a flash of lightning. After a delay he runs after her, only to lose sight of her in the underground station. But a few days later he meets her again by accident, and she is starting to stage a play of commitment and withdrawal in which she implicates Paul up to the point of self-abandonment by blind love for her.