“Is that what you are afraid of?”
“Yes, my God, yes,” said David Blake, speaking only just above his breath.
“I don’t think you need be afraid. I don’t, really, David. You look very tired. You look as if you wanted sleep more than anything else in the world.”
She spoke very gently. “Will you let me send you to sleep? I think I can.”
“Does one ask a man who is dying of thirst if one may give him a drink?”
“Then I may?”
“If you can—but—” He broke off as Markham came in to clear away the tea. Elizabeth began to talk of trivialities. For a minute or two Markham came and went, but when she had taken away the tray, and the door was shut, there was silence again.
Elizabeth had turned her chair a little. She sat looking into the fire. She was not making pictures among the embers, as she sometimes did. Her eyes had a brooding look. Her honey-coloured hair looked like pale gold against the brown panelling behind her. She sat very still. David found it pleasant to watch her, pleasant to be here.
His whole head was stiff and numb with lack of sleep. Every muscle seemed stretched and every nerve taut. There was a dull, continuous pain at the back of his head. Thought seemed muffled, his faculties clogged. Two thirds of his brain was submerged, but in the remaining third consciousness flared like a flickering will-o’-the-wisp above a marsh.
David lay back in his chair. This was a peaceful place, a peaceful room. He had not meant to stay so long, but he had no desire to move. Slowly, slowly the tide of sleep mounted in him. Not, as often lately, with a sudden flooding wave which retreated again as suddenly, and left his brain reeling, but steadily, quietly, like the still rising of some peaceful, moon-drawn sea. He seemed to see that lifting tide. It was as deep and still as those still waters of which another David wrote. It rose and rose—the will-o’-the-wisp of consciousness ceased its tormented flickering, and he slept.