Little by little the mist in which Michael lay shifted and cleared, and closed in on him again. But the times when it cleared became nearer together. He felt that the great lethargy in which he lay would shift when the mist shifted. Dimly, as if through innumerable veils, he was aware that something indefinable but terrible crouched behind it. Days passed. Blank days and blank nights. He had forgotten everything. * * * * * He had been lying awake a long time, years and years. The doctor had been in to see him just before sunrise, had raised him, and made him drink, and laid him back upon his pillow. And now he felt full of rest. How clear everything was becoming. 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. * * * * *