“Chut!” she said, flitting noiselessly to my side. “You mustn't talk.” And then she poured something down my throat. I lay back, wondering what it all meant. Presently a grizzled and tanned man, wearing a narrow black tie, came into the room. His face seemed oddly familiar. The nurse whispered to him. He came up to the bed, and asked me in French how I felt. “I don't know at all,” said I. He laughed. “That's a good sign. Let me see how you are getting on.” He stuck a thermometer in my mouth and held my pulse. These formalities completed, he turned up the bedclothes and did something with my body. Only then did I realise that I was tightly bandaged. My impressions grew clearer, and when he raised his face I recognised the doctor who had sat on the sofa with Anastasius Papadopoulos. “Nothing could be better,” said he. “Keep quiet, and all will be well.” “Will you kindly explain?” I asked. “You've had an operation. Also a narrow escape.” I smiled at him pityingly. “What is the good of taking all this trouble? Why are you wasting your time?” He looked at me uncomprehendingly for a moment, and then he laughed as the light came to him. “Oh, I understand! Yes. Your English doctors had told you you were going to die. That an operation would be fatal--so your good friend Madame Brandt informed us--but we--_nous autres Francais_--are more enterprising. Kill or cure. We performed the operation--we didn't kill you--and here you are--cured.” My heart sickened with a horrible foreboding. A clamminess, such as others feel at the approach of death, spread over my brow and neck. “Good God!” I cried, “you are not trying to tell me that I'm going to live?” “Why, of course I am!” he exclaimed, brutally delighted. “If nothing else kills you, you'll live to be a hundred.” “Oh, damn!” said I. “Oh, damn! Oh, damn!” and the tears of physical weakness poured down my cheeks. “_Ce sont des droles de gens, les Anglais_!” I heard him whisper to the nurse before he left the room. Belonging to a queer folk or not, I found the prospect more and more dismally appalling according as my mind regained its clarity. It was the most overwhelming, piteous disappointment I have ever experienced in my life. I cursed in my whimpering, invalid fashion. “But don't you want to get well?” asked the wide-eyed nurse. “Certainly not! I thought I was dead, and I was very happy. I've been tricked and cheated and fooled,” and I dashed my fist against the counterpane. “If you go on in this way,” said the nurse, “you will commit suicide.” “I don't care!” I cried--and then, they tell me, fainted. My temperature also ran up, and I became lightheaded again. It was not until the next day that I recovered my sanity. This time Lola was in the room with the nurse, and after a while the latter left us together. Even Lola could not understand my paralysing dismay.