She opened her eyes and looked at the white walls, white beds, white screens, white sunlight through the windows, and women in white caps and dresses moving silently about with white vessels in their hands.
"Why, this must be a hospital," she thought. "How on earth did I come here?"
Her arm, lying outside the sheet, looked blue and cold and felt as if it did not belong to her. She could not turn her head because it was bandaged, and when, after an eternity of effort, she succeeded in lifting her hand, she discovered that her hair had been cut away on one side. Closing her eyes again, she lay without thinking, without stirring, without feeling, while she let life cover her slowly in a warm flood. The blessed relief was that nothing mattered; nothing that had happened or could ever happen mattered at all. After the months when she had cared so intensely, it was like the peace of the Sabbath not to care any longer, neither to worry nor to wonder about the future.
"I must have hurt myself when I fell," she said.
To her surprise a voice close by the bed answered, "Yes, you fainted in the street and a cab struck you. You have been ill, but you're getting all right now."
A man was standing beside her, a large, ruddy, genial-looking man, with a brown beard and the kindest eyes she had ever seen. He wore a red and black tie and there was a square gold medal hanging from his watch chain.
"Have I been here long?" she asked, and her voice sounded so queer that she couldn't believe it had come out of her lips.
"A week to-day. It will be another week at least before you're strong enough to be out."
"Was I very ill?"
"At first. We had to operate. That's why your head is shaved on one side. But you came through splendidly," he added in his hearty manner. "You have a superb constitution."