The most extraordinary thing happened to him then, inside his mind. He knew that he did not know this girl; had never so much as been aware of her existence, whosoever and whatsoever she might be. But he knew, too, as he looked into the dark softness of the wide-set eyes, that here was no stranger. In a blinding flash of that clear and instinctive sanity which may so often and so easily be mistaken for its very antithesis, he knew that his essential and basic self had
His eyes widened and he was for a moment oblivious to the pain which had increasingly been flaming through him. For a checked instant of time, the dark eyes widened too and in them he thought he saw reflection of that same momentarily paralysing shock of surprise.
And then she spoke, in a clear, cool young voice which was curiously deep yet had in it no hint of masculinity. She moved a little as she spoke, and the strange, binding spell between their eyes was broken and he saw her for the first time.
She was young, younger than her voice and her eyes: if she had reached her twenties, the accession was recent. She was, perhaps, a little under the middle height of American women but she was lithe and free-moving and slim without angularity. Her hair was smooth and shining. It was unshorn, and it coiled about her proud neat head in a dark soft rope which was like a halo framing from above the oval of her face; an oval whose purity of outline somehow welded into a fascinating and compelling unity features which did not intrinsically fit with one another—the wide-set eyes dark and luminous beneath their fine uptilted brows, the charming and memorable and indefinable nose, the strong yet gentle sweep of the jaw, the high cheekbones with the faint suggestion of gauntness in the shadows beneath them, the wide and generous and vivid mouth, upturning at the corners and with a lower lip of delectable fullness.
She said: “Be quiet now. You’re all right. But you have to sleep. The doctor left something to make you sleep.”
She bent over him and gently lifted his left arm from the sheets and began to push back the sleeve of the silk pyjama coat whose softness he had felt unknowingly.
He tried to see her eyes again, but all that met his gaze was the nape of her neck, soft and smooth and golden-tanned beneath the smooth coilings of the gleaming dark hair. He tried to speak, but his lips felt stiff and unwieldy and his tongue seemed awkwardly heavy. He tried again and managed a few creaking words.
“Where . . . is . . . this?” he mumbled.
She said: “You mustn’t talk yet. It’s all right.”
He felt something wet and cold upon the outside of his upper arm and then firm strong fingers which pinched around the cold place and then a stinging little jab.
“There,” said the deep young voice. “You’ll go to sleep now.”
He was in a deep warm pit. It was soft and cloudily comfortable and the only sign of pain in him was memory which made present peace all the more delicious.
He bathed, he wallowed, in the heavenly nothingness.
And then after hours or æons the voices began. They were very quiet at first, little formless rustlings which should have enhanced the delight of this endless irresponsible drowsing like rain upon the roof. Should have but did not—for it became imperative to his mind that he should catch their words, and peace began to slip from him, layer by lovely layer.
The voices grew louder, one at a time, against the for ever rustling background of the others. They rocketed up out of the rustling and hurled their words at his cringing ears and subsided into the obbligato again and were replaced by others. He could not escape them—and the peace was transmuted into a strange hell where he cowered from words as if they were jagged missiles which would bruise and tear his head to pulp.