“Was I?” he answered. “How are things going?”
“I cannot tell yet,” said Ermi. “All I know is that you were faring badly when I came up. Two of them were dead, but the other two were killing you.”
“You should have left me to them,” said McEwen, noticing now for the first time Ermi’s wounds. “It does not matter so much—one Lucidi more or less—what of it? But you have been injured.”
“I—oh, nothing. You are the one to complain. I fear you are badly injured.”
“Oh, I,” returned McEwen heavily, feeling at last the weight of death upon him, “I am done for. I cannot live. I felt myself dying some time ago.”
He closed his eyes and trembled. In another moment——
McEwen opened his eyes. Strangely enough he was looking out upon jingling carriages and loitering passersby in the great city park. It was all so strange, by comparison with that which he had so recently seen, the tall buildings in the distance, instead of the sword trees, the trees, the flowers. He jumped to his feet in astonishment, then sank back again in equal amaze, a passerby eyeing him curiously the while.
“I have been asleep,” he said in a troubled way. “I have been dreaming. And what a dream!”
He shut his eyes again, wishing, for some strange reason—charm, sympathy, strangeness—to regain the lost scene. An odd longing filled his heart, a sense of comradeship lost, of some friend he knew missing. When he opened his eyes again he seemed to realize something more of what had been happening, but it was fading, fading.