He looked up, studied his features in the soft, forgiving light of his lover. The face that he had never associated with himself..... His eyes were drawn downward to the wiry muscles that reached from his chest to his arm. Always slender and taut, they now looked almost famished, layered rope wrapped stranding and twine after strand into nothingness. What were they for? And the rage inside him. Could he tear down the walls? Could he dive through the mirror and come to the place where his wife lay needing him, distraught, possibly frightened and in torment? And suddenly the image changed, becoming sinister and spectral. The remembrance 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.