"I will tell you all about it," she said, "because I am sure you will be easier, but after I am through I want you to try to compose yourself and go off to sleep, because this will be enough talking for now, and I want you to be fresh for the doctor. Do you understand?" I dropped my eyelids in token of agreement and she went on. "You remember that you complained of feeling unwell in Paris at Mr. Bradley's house. You probably had quite a temperature then, though you might not have known it. You came directly back to Oxford, but for forty-eight hours no one knew where you were, for the people here supposed you there. Finally, when Mr. Bradley telegraphed, they grew anxious here, and while they were wondering what to do, your dog ran in, acting so strangely that they suspected something and followed him. He led them directly to you and they found you unconscious in a marshy old lane about six miles out from the town. They brought you here in a horse blanket, the Professor sent for me, and we have been taking care of you ever since. Mr. Bradley has been here twice, but you were too ill to see anybody; he saw that everything possible was being done. I shall write him directly that you are on the uphill road now, and that care and patience are all you need. "Now, take this medicine, Mr. Jerrolds, and repay me for this long story by going directly to sleep." I took it, lay for a moment in a dreamy wonder, and drifted off. As she had said, the uphill journey had begun. That afternoon I saw the doctor, a grizzled, kindly man, and it was he who told me what I had already somehow divined--that I owed my life to Harriet Buxton. "I never saw such nursing," he said frankly; "the woman has a real genius. It was nip and tuck with you, Mr. Jerrolds, and she simply set her teeth and _wouldn't_ give up! One can't wonder the American nurses get such prices--they're worth it. Now it's hold hard and cultivate your patience, and get back that two or three stone we lost during the siege, and then good-bye to me!" But oh, how long it was! Day after day, and night after night, and day after day again I counted the pieces of furniture in the bare, dull room and read faces into the hideous wall-paper and stared into the empty window. The little night-light punctuated the dark; the feeble sunlight struggled through the rain. The few kindly friends who called upon me I could not see; their sympathetic commonplaces were unendurable to my weakened nerves. Had it not been for the return, now and then, of the pains I had suffered in my delirium, mercifully less and less violent, which made the periods of their absence hours of comparative pleasure, I think I should have grown into a hopeless nervous invalid from sheer ennui. I had never been ill that I remember since the days of my childish maladies, and I fretted as only such an one can and must fret under the irksome novelty of pain, weakness and irritation.