s. Bailey. It was cheerful, and said that was good hearing, and now
we should do. He said:--'You lie quiet, Mr. Torrens, and I'll tell you
what it all was; because I daresay you don't know, and would like to.' I
said yes--very much. So he told me the story in a comfortable optimist
way--said it was a loss of blood from the occipital artery that had made
such a wreck of me, but that a contusion of the head had been the cause
of the insensibility, which had nearly stopped the action of the heart,
else I might have bled to death...."

"Oh, how white you were when we found you!" Gwen exclaimed--"So terribly
white! But I half think I can see how it happened. Your heart stopped
pumping the blood out, because you were stunned, and that gave the
artery a chance to pull itself together. That's the sort of idea Dr.
Merridew gave me, with the long words left out."

"What a very funny thing!" said Adrian thoughtfully, "to have one's life
saved by being nearly killed by something else. _Similia similibus
curantur._ However, all's fish that comes to one's net. Well--when Sir
Coupland had told me his story, he said casually:--'What's all this Mrs.
Bailey was telling me about your finding the room so dark?' I humbugged
a little over it, and said my eyesight was very dim. Whatever he
thought, he said very little to me about it. Indeed, he only said that
he was not surprised. A shock to the head and loss of blood might easily
react on the optic nerve. It would gradually right itself with rest. I
said I supposed he could try tests--lenses and games--to find out if the
eyes were injured. He said he would try the lenses and games later, if
it seemed necessary. For the present I had better stay quiet and not
think about it. It would improve. Then my father and 'Rene came, and
were jolly glad to hear my voice again. For I had only been
half-conscious for days, and only less than half audible, if, indeed, I
ever said anything. But I was on my guard, and my father went away home
without knowing, and I don't believe 'Rene quite knows now. It was your
father who spotted the thing first. Had he told you, to put you up to
the hand-shaking device?"

"He never said a word. The handshaking was my own brilliant idea. When I
found--what I did find out--I went away and had a good cry in mamma's
room." This speech was an effort on Gwen's part to get a little
nearer--ever so little--to Marcus Curtius; nearer, that is, to her
metaphorical parallel of his