added Darkey, but the man on the bench did not stir.
One look at his face sufficed to startle the keeper, and presently two
policemen were wheeling an ambulance cart to the hospital. Darkey
followed, gave such information as he could, and then went his own ways.

II

In the afternoon the patient regained full consciousness. His eyes
wandered vacantly about the illimitable ward, with its rows of beds
stretching away on either side of him. A woman with a white cap, a white
apron, and white wristbands bent over him, and he felt something
gratefully warm passing down his throat. For just one second he was
happy. Then his memory returned, and the nurse saw that he was crying.
When he caught the nurse's eye he ceased, and looked steadily at the
distant ceiling.

'You're better?'

'Yes.'

He tried to speak boldly, decisively, nonchalantly. He was filled with a
sense of physical shame, the shame which bodily helplessness always
experiences in the presence of arrogant, patronizing health. He would
have got up and walked briskly away if he could. He hated to be waited
on, to be humoured, to be examined and theorized about. This woman would
be wanting to feel his pulse. She should not; he would turn
cantankerous. No doubt they had been saying to each other, 'And so
young, too! How sad!' Confound them!

'Have you any friends that you would like to send for?'

'No, none.'

The girl--she was only a girl--looked at him, and there was that in her
eye which overcame him.

'None at all?'

'Not that I want to see.'

'Are your parents alive?'

'My mother is, but she lives away in the Five Towns.'

'You've not seen her lately, perhaps?'

He did not reply, and the nurse spoke again, but her voice sounded
indistinct and far off.

When he awoke it was night. At the other end of the ward was a long
table covered with a white cloth, and on this table a lamp.

In the ring of light under the lamp was an open book, an inkstand and a
pen. A nurse--not _his_ nurse--was standing by the table, her fingers
idly drumming the cloth, and near her a man in evening dress. Perhaps a
doctor. They were conversing in low tones. In the middle of the ward was
an open stove, and the restless flames were reflected in all the brass
knobs of the bedsteads and in some shining metal balls which hung from
an unlighted chandelier. His part of the ward was almost in darkness. A
confused, subdued murmur of little coughs, breathings, rustlings, was