The room was deliciously cool, and filled with the moist, sweet odor of the circumjacent roses and violets.

All this seemed highly fantastic, and yet Rowland hardly felt surprised.
"Your mother was greatly alarmed at your note," he said, "and I came to satisfy myself that, as I believed, you are not ill." Roderick lay motionless, except that he slightly turned his head toward his friend.
He was smelling a large white rose, and he continued to present it to his nose.

In the darkness of the room he looked exceedingly pale, but his handsome eyes had an extraordinary brilliancy.

He let them rest for some time on Rowland, lying there like a Buddhist in an intellectual swoon, whose perception should be slowly ebbing back to temporal matters.

"Oh, I 'm not ill," he said at last.