Freedom and solitude! Are these not two sweet Sisters of Mercy?
How few of all worldly ills and sorrows can they not either cure or assuage? Or, rather, perhaps, ought one not to call them mates, from which the child, Content, is born?
I lay there, weak and suffering still, but a balm seemed poured all over me, for now I was alone.
I fell asleep after a time and did not wake till it was dark. I felt stronger, better. Sleep had nursed me in her own way through all the afternoon.
A lamp had been lighted on the table beside me and only needed turning up. There was a tray of food there and a carafe of water. I took a little of both and felt life stirring in all my veins, now that the paralysing grip of the deadly drugs they had been giving me was lifted off.
I lay still, gazing about the large, shadowy room and into the violet dusk of the square beyond the window, and then gradually sleep came over me again.
In less than an hour I started up from my bed, wide-awake. I thought I had been with Hop Lee. I looked round the room. All was just as I had seen it last. I sank back on my pillow. "It was only a vivid dream," I said to myself, and then fell to wondering what the dream had been. I could not remember. It seemed some communication had been made to my brain while I slept, that it had received very clearly, but now that I was awake it could not retain nor understand it, but it could, and did remember that I had dreamed of Hop Lee, and that it was a pleasant dream.
Yes, the man I had murdered had been with me, had spoken to me, and the impression was that of rest, of calm, of some aching self-reproach being appeased.
"Just a dream, of course," I said to myself; "but how odd that I cannot remember at all what he said." An hour perhaps passed by while I lay quiet, strangely comforted by the dream I had forgotten; and then I lapsed back into sleep and again Hop Lee was with me, speaking, telling me something earnestly, exhorting me gently, and again I woke with a feeling of gratitude, of peace; but I could recall nothing of what had been said to me.
The light burned steadily beside me, and I sat up and thought.