In this chapter, the Underground Man tries to convince himself that he's doing the right thing by telling the girl that the "great darkness is back" . He's not worried about what's going to happen in the future, though, because he knows that the darkness is going to get worse and worse before it gets better. The Underground Man doesn't know how long it'll take to get there, but he does know that it's only a matter of time before the whole world falls into chaos. He wonders what the girl would do if she knew that the world was going to fall into chaos, and he wonders if she would do anything to stop it. He also wonders why they're sitting around and not doing anything about it. They're just like her, he says, and they can't stop her. They can make her want to tell them to stop, and it won't be as if she's joined them.