When he opened his eyes he was lying in bed, in his own room. The light
was darkened: there was a faint smell of drugs in the air: and a figure
was moving noiselessly about, preparing something at a small table. He
had been ill, then!... but for how long?
He heard a slight noise as of the door being very carefully opened, and
he saw his father come into the room, walking on tiptoe. Graham kept
his eyes closed that they might not know he had awakened. Things were
beginning to come back to him, and for just a few minutes longer he
wanted to keep that cool darkness about him.
He felt a strange languor through all his body; he felt too weak to
do anything but lie there in the softened light, and in the twilight
of his soul. It would be soon enough to awaken in a little――not just
yet――in a little....
* * * * *
And all that was thirty years ago. His father was long dead. Every one
was dead.
Dawn had crept into the room, grey and ghostly. He shivered and looked
round. His letter, unfinished, lay there on the table. Everything
seemed cold, desolate, lifeless. He got up and stretched himself, for
he felt stiff and cramped. Scarce worth while, now, to go to bed! He
walked over to the window and looked out into the breaking day. The
world seemed very old and cheerless. Was it the chill of approaching
age in his own blood, he wondered, that made him find it so? He smiled
a strange, dim little smile. Best, then, to sit by the fire and doze!
He came back to the table, and leaning over it, buried his face in his
hands.