Page:The Best Continental Short Stories of 1923–1924.djvu/64

 to adjourn the meeting, which he did with the remark that he “regretted they had been deprived of the pleasure of discussing so absorbing a subject.”

His throat dry and his mind empty, Boura ended by escaping. It was a mild winter evening, though snow appeared likely. The bells and the noise of the cars sounded muffled. Boura heard hurried steps behind him and slipped behind a tree. His follower, quite out of breath, stopped and addressed him rapidly:

“My name is Holecek and I recognised you in the course of the lecture. Do you remember me?”

“No,” replied Boura somewhat uncertainly. “Do you remember, last year, the imprint in the snow?”

“Ah, yes,” said Boura, reassured, “so it was you! I am very happy, to yes, really. I have often thought of you. Well, did you ever come across the other footprints?”

“No. Yet I looked hard But why would you not answer that last question at the meeting of the Society?”

“I don’t know. I did not feel inclined to answer it.”

“Listen. There is no harm in my telling you. You nearly convinced me. When that hairy fellow got up, I felt inclined to get up and shout to him: ‘What? For a whole hour, Sir, you have been listening to truth, and you now ask what is truth? You have heard arguments to which no objection could be taken. There were no gaps or errors among them. Nothing from beginning to end that was not rational.’ Why, then, not have answered him?”

“What would have been the use?” asked Boura contritely. “I know very well that all I said was self-evident, logical, just, anything you like to call it. But, when first I reasoned it out, it seemed neither evident nor logical to me. At that time, these ideas were so odd that they made me laugh occasionally. To myself I appeared mad. I was infinitely happy. Yet there was not one atom of reason in it all. I don’t know where I got it it was without object.”

“Tracks that come from nowhere and that lead to nowhere ” Holecek suddenly recollected.

“Yes. Well, now I have built it up into a system, or perhaps into a truth. It is all beautifully clear and logical.