e seemed relieved and went with alacrity. At
the door he turned and, coming back to me, said in a whisper:

"I sleep lightly and I shall have my pistols with me. I won't feel so
heavy-headed when I get out of this mummy smell."

He too, then, had shared my experience of drowsiness!

I asked the Nurse if she wanted anything. I noticed that she had a
vinaigrette in her lap. Doubtless she, too, had felt some of the
influence which had so affected me. She said that she had all she
required, but that if she should want anything she would at once let me
know. I wished to keep her from noticing my respirator, so I went to
the chair in the shadow where her back was toward me. Here I quietly
put it on, and made myself comfortable.

For what seemed a long time, I sat and thought and thought. It was a
wild medley of thoughts, as might have been expected from the
experiences of the previous day and night. Again I found myself
thinking of the Egyptian smell; and I remember that I felt a delicious
satisfaction that I did not experience it as I had done. The
respirator was doing its work.

It must have been that the passing of this disturbing thought made for
repose of mind, which is the corollary of bodily rest, for, though I
really cannot remember being asleep or waking from it, I saw a
vision--I dreamed a dream, I scarcely know which.

I was still in the room, seated in the chair. I had on my respirator
and knew that I breathed freely. The Nurse sat in her chair with her
back toward me. She sat quite still. The sick man lay as still as the
dead. It was rather like the picture of a scene than the reality; all
were still and silent; and the stillness and silence were continuous.
Outside, in the distance I could hear the sounds of a city, the
occasional roll of wheels, the shout of a reveller, the far-away echo
of whistles and the rumbling of trains. The light was very, very low;
the reflection of it under the green-shaded lamp was a dim relief to
the darkness, rather than light. The green silk fringe of the lamp had
merely the colour of an emerald seen in the moonlight. The room, for
all its darkness, was full of shadows. It seemed in my whirling
thoughts as though all the real things had become shadows--shadows
which moved, for they passed the dim outline of the high windows.
Shadows which had sentience. I even thought there was sound, a faint
sound as of the mew of a cat--the rustle of drapery and a metallic