Page:Karel Čapek - The Absolute at Large (1927).djvu/112

 the quiet night. It was half-past four in the morning. Dr. Blahous looked out on the dark street, shivering a little with the cold of the night. Everywhere was the stillness of death, not a glimmer of light showed in any human habitation. The Lecturer raised his eyes to the sky. It was already paling a little, but it still shone in its infinite sublimity, sown with stars. "How long it is since I looked at the sky!" came suddenly into the scholar's mind. "Good heavens, it is more than thirty years!"

And then he felt a delicious coolness about his brow, as though someone had taken his head in cool and spotless hands. "I'm so lonely," the old man sighed, "so terribly lonely all the time! Yes, stroke my hair a little. Alas, it is thirty long years since anyone's hand was laid upon my brow!"

Dr. Blahous stood there in the window, stiff and shaking. "There is something here all about me," he suddenly perceived with a sweet and overwhelming emotion. "Dear God, I am not alone after all! Someone's arm is around me, someone is beside me; oh, if he would only stay!"

If his landlady had entered the room a little later, she would have seen him standing in the window with both arms raised on high, his head flung back, and an expression of the utmost rapture on his face. But then he shuddered, opened his eyes, and as if in a dream went back to his desk.