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, any-
