“No;... do they contract?”
“A little.... Yes, I am sure the pupils of your eyes are contracting. Don’t talk.” 304
“No;... then it was concussion of the brain?”
“Yes;... the shock is passing.... Don’t talk.”
Time moved on again; space slowly contracted into a symmetrical shape, set with little points of light; sleep and fatigue alternated with glimmers of reason, which finally grew into a faint but steady intelligence. And, very delicately, memory stirred in a slumbering brain.
Reason and memory were mine again, frail toys for a stricken man, so frail I dared not, for a time, use them for my amusement—and one of them was broken, too—memory!—broken short at the moment when full in my face I had felt the hot, fetid breath of a lion.
“Speed!”
“Yes; I am here.”
“What time is it?”
I heard the click of his hunting-case. “Eleven o’clock.”