At last I woke to a sense of bodily constriction and discomfort, and to the queer realisation that what I had taken for the Garden of Prosperpine was my own bedroom, and that the pale lady whom I had so confidently assumed was she who, crowned with calm leaves, "gathers all things mortal with cold, immortal hands" was no other than a blue-and-white-vested hospital nurse.
"What the----" I began.
"Chut!" she said, flitting noiselessly to my side.

"You mustn't talk." And then she poured something down my throat.

I lay back, wondering what it all meant.

Presently a grizzled and tanned man, wearing a narrow black tie, came into the room.

His face seemed oddly familiar.