CHAPTER XVI
In Which I Take My Turn at Playing the Invalid
Not for a very long time. They begin again—those recollections—a few minutes later, break off once more, and then return and break off alternately, over and over again.
The first thing I remember, after my whirligig flight over the Paris pavement, is a crowd of faces above me and someone pawing at my collar and holding my wrist. This someone, a man, a stranger, said in French:
“He is not dead, Mademoiselle.”
And then a voice, a voice that I seemed to recognize, said:
“You are sure, Doctor? You are sure? Oh, thank God!”
I tried to turn my head toward the last speaker—whom I decided, for some unexplainable reason, must be Hephzy—and to tell her that of course I wasn't dead, and then all faded away and there was another blank.
The next interval of remembrance begins with a sense of pain, a throbbing, savage pain, in my head and chest principally, and a wish that the buzzing in my ears would stop. It did not stop, on the contrary it grew louder and there was a squeak and rumble and rattle along with it. A head—particularly a head bumped as hard as mine had been—might be expected to buzz, but it should not rattle, or squeak either. Gradually I began to understand that the rattle and squeak were external and I was in some sort of vehicle, a sleeping car apparently, for I seemed to be lying down. I tried to rise and ask a question and a hand was laid on my forehead and a voice—the voice which I had decided was Hephzy's—said, gently: