His friends brought books for him to read. Clive brought him “The Island of Doctor Moreau,” which he had long ago promised to lend him. Paul came with a slender volume entitled “The Complete Works of Max Beerbohm.” Roger brought him “The Confessions of a Young Man,” and Don appeared with Dowson’s poems. Eddie Silver did not come, though Felix rather expected him to bring a volume of Swinburne.... Very nice of them, too, to think up such exotic and sophisticated books for him to read—a tribute, doubtless, to his superior tastes. But he felt, as he glanced languidly into their pages, that these were not just the kind of books a sick person wants to read. He wished somebody would bring him the Saturday Evening Post—or the Bab Ballads. 3 But it was all right—he didn’t want very much to read, anyway. It was pleasanter to lie and day-dream—or watch the pretty head-nurse, who was exactly like a pretty nurse on the cover of a magazine—or think. He had a lot of time to think, now. Hours. Funny, how one never seemed to get time to think, outside of a hospital. His thoughts were slow and long, reaching to places where it seemed he had not been in thought for a great while. Really, a hospital was a fine place. People ought to go there once a year for a long, long week of thinking. These thoughts of his own, for instance—how glad he was about them! They would make a great difference in his life, once he got out of the hospital.... The only trouble was that when he did get out of the hospital, he never could remember what any of those thoughts were.... They had vanished, leaving apparently no trace upon his mind. And that seemed queer, too. Thoughts that took such hours upon hours to think, and that seemed so wonderful at the time, oughtn’t to disappear like that.... The only thought that remained was a very small and insignificant thought, not worthy of being remembered. It was not really a thought at all, but only a memory: it went back to the time when he was a little boy in Maple, and there was a syringa bush in front of the house, growing up to the second-story window; and he would lean out of the window to see the bird’s nest in the syringa bush, and smell the perfume of the syringa blossoms; and he would watch the mother-bird, sitting on her speckled eggs and looking back at him with bright, sharp eyes, not at all afraid of him.... Out of all those profound thoughts, that was all he could ever remember. 4 On Saturday morning, his fifth day at the hospital, Clive came, bringing Felix his pay-envelope from the Chronicle. “When do you get out?” he asked. “Some time today,” said Felix. “The doctor has to formally discharge me, or something. This afternoon, I guess.”