In this chapter, we learn that Guppy is in love with Zillah, and that he has been avoiding her ever since. Guppy tells Zillah that he can apologize to him in two ways: first, he can walk into the wizard's office and hand over the files. The second way is to apologize to the wizard himself. The first step, Guppy says, is to give the wizard the files, and the second step, apologizing to him, will be to give him the files and start a conversation. He's going to do both of these things, but he's not going to be able to get Zillah to sign the contract, because the wizard is ignoring him. He tells Guppy that he'll probably be out of luck if he can't get the wizard to agree to the contract. If he doesn't, he will be dead.