Out of the darkness a faint voice wavered, "Lilacs?"
The nurse bent over the high hospital bed. "Roses—lovely ones."
A long silence. Then, "Lovely ladies?" said the faint voice.
He could see them with his eyes shut—a whole procession of pretty ladies, all floating in the dimness. Just their faces on a broad band of light, over which the gray mists rolled now and then and blurred the outlines. Then the faces would again shine out, smiling—gay and sad, pensive and glad.
"Lovely ladies," he said again.
They followed him into his dreams, and kept him company until the pain began—that racking, wrenching pain; then they flew from him and left him alone to suffer.
After a long time, when the nurse had bared his shoulder and had pricked it with something that felt like a pin, they came back—all those lovely faces; only now they seemed to peep from behind clouds of smoke, heavier than the mists, and more tantalizing in their concealments.
So they came and went through the long night, leaving when the pain racked him, returning always when the nurse did things to his shoulder with her little shining instrument.
They fled from him, too, when he opened his eyes and saw hazily that there was a light, and a great many flowers, and that Anthony was standing in a sort of bower of them.
And Anthony was saying to some unseen person who stood at the head of the bed, "Did he notice the flowers?"