When first I opened my eyes I was in a quiet bedroom. The walls were silver gray, and of wood. There were no pictures. The little windows were without curtains and looked right out at the wonderful world. It was sunset and from where I lay I could see it, crimson as the banners of a king. I could hear a fire leaping and rejoicing in some room beyond, and voices—two voices. A man and a woman were talking together, rather anxiously, I thought. “They are talking of me,” I decided. And then I began to remember. “Is my neck broken?” I asked myself. And I wriggled it. It wriggled in the good old way. “It’s my back!” I decided. So I tried to sit up. I was pretty dizzy, but my back worked perfectly. I tried both legs and both arms. They were just as active as I could wish. I poked my ribs. They appeared to be in their right places. And then I grew frightfully weary. I wanted to cry, yet I felt it would be too much of an effort. It seemed as if I were sinking down, down through gray mist. Everything floated away from before me, and I knew nothing more for a time. Then somebody brought in a light. It was not a very large or a very bright light, but it managed to reach the queer, shadowy place where I was living, and to make me open my eyes. “How do you do, ma’am?” I heard myself saying. The lady who carried the lamp nearly dropped it. But she controlled herself and set it on a table. Then she came and hung over me and said in a voice that trembled: “I’m very well, thank you. How are you?” We have both laughed about it since—about our speaking to each other in that queer formal way. But we had to make some sort of a beginning, and perhaps that was as good as any. “I am all right, thank you, ma’am,” I said. “I tried myself all over a while ago, and there is nothing broken.” “No,” said the lady, “there is nothing broken.” But she looked at me doubtfully, and with a queer kind of curiosity. “Do you remember that you were hurt?” she asked. “That you were thrown from your horse and hurt?” I nodded. “My pony?” I asked. “Is she well?” “Oh, yes, she’s all right. She wasn’t hurt. But you were, and my husband—it was his machine that frightened your pony—picked you up and brought you here.” “Thank you,” I said. Then I began to wish she would go away and leave me alone. I wanted to go back into that queer, gray, silent place of mine again, where sort of shadowy things went by in a long procession, without one of them stopping to bother me with questions. I did think I would enjoy looking at the lady and see what she was like, but I was too lazy and so I decided I would do that another time. Only I could see that she was tall, that her hair was golden, and that she was very thin. That seemed enough for the present; so I closed my eyes.