Then came the pain, like a sudden knife-blade, piercing him. He screamed, one awful, uncontrollable yell, and pitched forward.
There was a queer, unfamiliar smell, and stillness. Not the empty stillness of his own house, but the stillness of human beings and hushed movements.
Nausea possessed him. He opened his eyes for a moment and then closed them. He was in a white-walled room, darkened. Against the drawn blind he could feel the sunlight beating. A ray of it came in between the shade and the window-jamb and struck the opposite wall. It was broad day. Suddenly, quick and clear as an arrow released from a taut bow-string, Donaldson’s mind leaped up into consciousness.
He was in a hospital, and it was over—the operation. It was the anesthetic which had nauseated him. What had he said? Had he betrayed himself? Yet here he was, lying quietly in this room. However, they couldn’t take him away while he was sick.
They were waiting—waiting till he got well to put the chains on him! He knew it. That was why they were so quiet, not to make him suspicious. He would ask the nurse. She could tell him whether he had talked.
But the nurse was not there. She did not know he was awake. Well, he would wait and ask her. Maybe he hadn’t talked. People didn’t always. The sun streamed against the blind. Light, hope! It might be that he would see it again, free! That he would walk along the streets in the open day.
The door opened and the nurse entered. She came to his bedside. He would smile at her easily, indifferently. She would think his question a casual one.
“Nurse,” he began. His voice sounded far away, weaker than it should have.
The nurse smiled. “How is my patient? Feeling better?”