I awoke in broad sunlight. The room was full of it, and the scent of flowers floated in through the open windows and mingled with the faint smell of drugs. For some time I lay there quietly, too languid to make a movement or to speak. Then the door softly opened, and I saw Mrs. Carroll come in and stand beside my bed. “Is he asleep?” I heard her ask, for I had closed my eyes. I opened them and looked up at her. “No,” I answered, smiling. She smiled, too. “It’s time for you to take your medicine,” and the nurse came forward to give it to me. When I had swallowed it, I lay back among the soft pillows deliciously.... * * * * * The memory of my convalescence is a strange one, for it came at a time when certain physical changes were taking place within me, and I seemed to myself to be somehow different from what I had been before I fell ill. My voice had altered; my mind was coloured by vague and happy dreams. Sometimes when I turned in bed or stretched myself, the contact of the fine linen sheets against my skin gave me a peculiar thrill, which ran all down my spine. It appeared I had been very ill, that it had been a touch-and-go matter whether I should manage to pull through; yet now I did not feel that I wanted to get well too quickly. The flowers, the fruit, the brightness, the big delightful room――so different from my room at home――the care everybody took of me, the books that were read to me, the sense of being here so securely, with everything just as I liked it, and with Mrs. Carroll to look after me――all that was delicious. The one jarring note was my father’s letter, which I read, and then put back in its envelope. It was about my escape, how near to death I had been, and how he hoped the mercy that had been shown me would make me think seriously. I did not want to think seriously: I wanted to bask in the sunshine of these pleasant days while they lasted. If I had died it would have been all over by this time, and since I hadn’t, why should I be different? It seemed to me hardly the time to talk of God’s mercy, seeing that I had barely scraped through a severe illness. It was like thanking a man, who has just broken your head with a stick, for not killing you outright. My father talked of a miracle, but I had slender faith in miracles, and I regret to say his entire letter struck me as amazingly unintelligent. In a kind of lazy and sublime egotism I began to ponder on the oddity of a man like my father having a son such as I was; and while I was engaged with these speculations Mrs. Carroll sat beside me, playing “patience.” She told me my father could not come to see me for fear of carrying the infection to school, and I received these tidings with an immense relief, for I had been dreading that he would want to talk to me about death, and perhaps make me join in returning thanks for my recovery. I watched her as she sat there, her plump hands drawing