I knew in an instinctive kind of way—I was quite sure I hadn’t been told—that I was in hospital, and I tried to remember if I had been knocked down by a car, but my mind was working badly. It refused to concentrate, and kept jumping across the room to the man in the opposite bed. Its only interest was to find out why he was holding his book the wrong way up, for it seemed to me the book looked dry and complicated enough without adding to the difficulty of reading it.
The man in the bed was young; not more than twenty-four or so, and his thick fair hair was over long and silky-looking. He had very deep-set eyes, and the lamp cast shadows in them so they seemed to be two dark holes in his face.
I suddenly became aware that he was also watching me, although he pretended to be reading; watching furtively from under his eyelids; watching as he turned a page slowly with a concentrated frown on his face.
“You’ll find it easier if you turn the book the right way up,” I said, and was surprised how far away my voice sounded, as if I were speaking in another room.
He glanced up and smiled. He was a nice-looking youngster : a typical collegian, more at home with a baseball bat than a book.
“I always read books this way up,” he said; his voice was unexpectedly high pitched. “It’s more fun, and it’s just as easy once you get the knack of it, but it does take a lot of practice.”
He laid the book down. “Well, how do you feel, Mr. Seabright? I’m afraid you have had a pretty rotten time. How’s the head?”
It was a funny thing, but now he mentioned it I discovered my head ached and an artery was pounding in my temple.
“It aches,” I said. “Is this a hospital?”
“Well, not exactly a hospital. I think they call it a sanitarium.”