rough, and then all the afternoon, and at intervals she made an effort
to cross over into the ordinary world, but she found that her heat and
discomfort had put a gulf between her world and the ordinary world which
she could not bridge. At one point the door opened, and Helen came in
with a little dark man who had--it was the chief thing she noticed about
him--very hairy hands. She was drowsy and intolerably hot, and as he
seemed shy and obsequious she scarcely troubled to answer him, although
she understood that he was a doctor. At another point the door opened
and Terence came in very gently, smiling too steadily, as she realised,
for it to be natural. He sat down and talked to her, stroking her hands
until it became irksome to her to lie any more in the same position and
she turned round, and when she looked up again Helen was beside her and
Terence had gone. It did not matter; she would see him to-morrow when
things would be ordinary again. Her chief occupation during the day was
to try to remember how the lines went:

Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy amber dropping hair;

and the effort worried her because the adjectives persisted in getting
into the wrong places.

The second day did not differ very much from the first day, except that
her bed had become very important, and the world outside, when she
tried to think of it, appeared distinctly further off. The glassy, cool,
translucent wave was almost visible before her, curling up at the end
of the bed, and as it was refreshingly cool she tried to keep her
mind fixed upon it. Helen was here, and Helen was there all day long;
sometimes she said that it was lunchtime, and sometimes that it was
teatime; but by the next day all landmarks were obliterated, and the
outer world was so far away that the different sounds, such as the
sounds of people moving overhead, could only be ascribed to their cause
by a great effort of memory. The recollection of what she had felt, or
of what she had been doing and thinking three days before, had faded
entirely. On the other hand, every object in the room, and the bed
itself, and her own body with its various limbs and their different
sensations were more and more important each day. She was completely
cut off, and unable to communicate with the rest of the world, isolated
alone with her body.

Hours and hours would pass thus, without getting any