someone called , right , or did i make- '' and the colonel kept talking , puzzling it out , while i picked up the book and found my way to that page where the general 's headlong race came to its end , and we were both stuck in our heads , the distance between us unbridgeable , and i could not listen to the colonel , because i was busy trying to get the last hints of her smell , busy telling myself that of course she had not done it .