Page:Karel Čapek - The Absolute at Large (1927).djvu/143

 happiest moment of my life. You have no idea, Rudy, what tremendous will-power it takes to shake that off."

"I can well believe it," said Marek gravely. "And tell me, what sort of er  symptoms did you have?"

"Love for my neighbour," Bondy whispered. "Man, I was frantic with love. I would never have believed it possible to feel anything like it."

There was silence for a moment.

"So, then, you've " Marek began.

"I've thrown it off. Rather like a fox that gnaws its own leg off when it's caught in a trap. But I'm still confoundedly weak after the struggle. An utter wreck, Rudy. As if I'd have typhoid. That's why I've come here, to pick up again, you see Is it all clear up here?"

"Quite clear; not a single trace of it so far. You can only sense it in Nature and everything; but then one could do that before—one always could, in the mountains."

Bondy kept a gloomy silence. "Well, and what do you make of it all?" he said absently, after a while. "Have you any notion up here of what's going on down below?"

"I get the papers. Even from the papers one can to a certain extent deduce what is happening. Of course these journalists distort everything; still,