was almost audible.

"And how would you judge me while a Belgian officer was raping your
wife?"

Caught in a trap of near despair, simultaneously hit by a rush of dizzy
sickness---a lethal virus had, in fact, attacked his stomach---his mind
and courage reeled in a half physical, half emotional torment.
Snatches of conversations with Dubcek came back to him, echoed and
enforced, made indisputable by the darkness that hung thick and
menacing around him. They dove and swirled like insane, angry birds.
His spirit palled before them.

"You must learn to be cynical"

"Some day you will be hurt very badly"

"It is the key to all truth"

"Forget your fairy-tale notions"

"While a Belgian officer was raping your wife"

"You will be hurt"

"Very badly"

"Raping your wife"

"Raping your wife"

"Raping your wife---"

"Stop it!" he cried in answer. "Get away from me!"

A foul nausea engulfed him as he staggered toward the bathroom, falling
to his knees and retching violently into the toilet. Hardly able to
breathe, feeling the very soul torn out his throat, he fell back
against the wall and tile as wave after wave of hot sweat dizziness
broke over. Finally, as if the agony that raped him had expended
itself he was left, a forlorn and shivering ball on the floor, hopeless
and friendless and lost.

But now the cold truth of it was clear, needing no help from the
physical assault. She was gone from him forever. She had been too
beautiful, too spirited. At best she was the unwilling mistress of a
bastard animal. At worst she was dead. Dubcek was right. There was
no unseen God to protect her, no Comforter to see him now and ease his
pain. He had been a fool, and now he would pay for it. He should have
told her to evacuate. They should never have come here. Fool! Fool!
Fool!

He wept no tears and shivered and struck the wall weakly with the side
of his fist.

"Dear God don't let it be. Don't leave her! Don't leave me here....."
He sobbed. "Don't leave me."

Not much like a prayer that his mother might have taught him, but still
he spoke it with all his soul. A young ensign, hearing his cries, came
in from the hallway and found him there. Putting his head through
Brunner's crooked arm, he lifted him and took him to the Infirmary.

The doctor had to be wakened, and did not come at once, so that he was
left in a half-lying sit in a bed behind a wrap-around screen, given
time, as it were, to g