The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his mind was quite clear--evidently his sleep had benefited him.

He was not in a bed at all as he understood the word, but lying naked on a very soft and yielding mattress, in a trough of dark glass.

The mattress was partly transparent, a fact he observed with a sense of insecurity, and below it was a mirror reflecting him greyly.

About his arm--and he saw with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow--was bound a curious apparatus of rubber, bound so cunningly that it seemed to pass into his skin above and below.

And this bed was placed in a case of greenish coloured glass (as it seemed to him), a bar in the white framework of which had first arrested his attention.