The encounter with Anna who is stealing openly a collection of poems by Bertolt Brecht in the shop where he works as a bookseller, hits Paul like a flash of lightning. After a delay he runs after her only to lose sight of Anna 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.