Why should he ask that, since the spectre was for me alone? Or if he had not seen It, how did he know this room was an unsafe area? My stupefied brain puzzled over these questions while I managed a sign of refusal. Any effort was impossible to me. The cold of the unearthly sea still numbed my body. My heart labored, staggering at each beat.
Vere's support and nearness were welcome to me. His tact let me rest in the mute inaction necessary to recovery, while my body, astonished that it still lived, hesitatingly resumed the task of life. Somehow he reassured and directed Phillida. Presently she was busied with the coffee apparatus in the corner of the room.
It was too much weariness even to turn my eyes aside from the expanse of the table before me. The vase was upset, I noted, as I had seemed to see it. The spray of purple heliotrope Phillida had put there the day before lay among the wet sheets of music. The Book of Hermas lay open at the page I had last turned, the rosy lamplight upon the text.
"Behold, I saw a great Beast that he might devour a city—whose name is Hegrin. Thou hast escaped—because thou didst not fear for so terrible a Beast. If, therefore, ye shall have prepared yourselves, yet may escape——"
What did they mean, the old, old words men have rejected? What had Hermas glimpsed in his visions? How many men are written down liars because they traveled in strange lands indeed, and explorers, strove to report what they had seen? Who before me had stood at the Barrier and set foot on the Frontier between the worlds?
The fog still dense outside was whitening with daybreak. A few hours while the sun ran its course once more for me, then night again, bringing completion of the menace. I recognized that this delay could not affect the end. Perhaps it would have been easier if all had finished for me tonight, easier if Vere and Phillida had not found me in time to bring me back.
How had they found out my condition? Wonder stirred under my lethargy. Had I called or cried out? It did not seem that I could have done so. Certainly I had not tried! I was not quite so poor an adventurer as that.
Phillida was back with a cup of steaming black coffee, tiptoeing in her anxiety and questioning Vere with her eyes. He took the cup, stooping to receive my glance of assent to the new medicine.
The brandy had stimulated, but sickened me. The coffee revived me so much that I was able to take the second cup without Vere's help. When I had walked up and down the room a few times, leaning on his arm, life had taken me back, if only for a little while.
The two nurses were so good in their care of me that our first words were of my gratitude to them. Then my curiosity found voice.