He raised his hand to his head. He
had not taken the trouble to do that before. He looked long at his
wasted hands laid on the coarse cotton sheeting. What were these marks
on the wrists? They seemed like an answer to a riddle of which he had
forgotten the question. If he only knew what those marks were he should
know numbers of other things as well. He raised his long right hand, and
held it close to his eyes.

These marks were bruises. A line of bruises went round the wrist. And
here over the bone was a scar. It was healed now, but it had been a deep
sore once.

_When?_

If only he could remember!

The mist in his mind cleared a little.

_Those bruises were made by chains._

A deadly faintness came over him.

* * * * *

Michael knew at last that he was in prison. The past filtered back into
his feeble mind drop by drop. He knew why he was there. He knew what he
had done to bring him there; he realised that he had been ill a long
time, many weeks. But there was still something sinister, mysterious,
crouching in the back of his mind.

The doctor sought to distract him, to rouse him. He was a botanist, and
he shewed Michael his collection of grasses. Michael did not want to
have the fatigue of looking at them, but he feigned an interest to
please the doctor. He gazed languidly at a spray, now dry and old. The
doctor explained to him that it was the sea lavender, which, in the
early autumn, had flushed the shallows of the lagoon with a delicate
grey lilac.

"I remember," said Michael, whitening.

It rushed back upon him, that time of waiting, marked by the flowering
and the fading of the sea lavender. The colour was seared upon his
brain.

"A hundred years it is lilac," he said, "and a hundred thousand years it
is a purple brown."

The doctor, bending lovingly over a specimen of a rare water plant,
looked up to see Michael's quivering face. He withdrew the book gently
and took it away.

Michael trembled exceedingly. He was on the verge of some abyss which he
should see clearly in another moment. The sea lavender grew on the very
edge of it. It yawned suddenly at his feet. The abyss was Fay's last
desertion. He looked down into it. It was quite dark.

* * * * *

A few days later the doctor brought another book. It was butterflies
this time. He saw that an increasing pressure was upon Michael's mind,
and he feared for his brain. He was too