The room blurred, lost its walls, became formless space; out of which, to his pleasurable surprise, he saw the carefully garbed figure of Colonel Mapleson walking toward him.  He never forgot that tea rose!  Confound him—­probably another benefit for one of his indigent song birds.  As Howat was about to speak the Colonel disappeared.  It was Scalchi, in street dress, a yellow fur about her throat, warm, seductive.  He had sent the divine Page the bouquet in paper lace.  But she too vanished.  He heard the strains of an orchestra; lingering he had missed the overture, and it might be the first duet—­with Geister in superb voice.  He was waiting for Mariana, that was it ... always late.  Then her hand was under his arm.  But it was the doctor from Jaffa.

Rudolph was at the foot of the bed, and the two men moved aside, conversed impolitely in hushed tones.  I’m sick, he thought lucidly.  One word reached him—­oxygen.  It all melted away again, into a black lake with ghostly swans, a painted mouth and showering confetti; one of the supreme waltzes that Johann Strauss alone could compose.  Later a woman in a folded linen cap was seated beside him, a chimera.  But she laid cool fingers on his Wrist, held a brownish, distasteful mixture to his lips.  A draught of egg nog was better, although it wasn’t as persuasive as some he had had:  Bundy Provost’s, for example.

Bundy was a galliard youth, but he was clear as ice underneath.  He wouldn’t have let them put that thing over his, Howat’s, face.  He tried to turn aside, but a cap of darkness descended upon him.  Afterward his breathing was easier.  A blue iron tank was standing nearby, and the nurse was removing a rubber mask attached to a flexible tube.  The latter led from a glass bottle, with a crystal pipe into the tank; the bottle held water; and the water was troubled with subsiding, clear bubbles.  More of the dark, unpleasant mixture, more egg nog.  Why did they trouble and trouble him—­already he was late getting to Irving Place.

The opera, as he had feared, had commenced; and it was at once strange and familiar.  The chorus and orchestra were singing in a deep ground tone; the stage was set with a row of great, seething furnaces; glaring white bars of light cut through vaporous, yellow gases and showered steel sparks where coppery figures were labouring obscurely in a flaming heat that rolled out over the audience.  There was a shrilling of violins, and then a deafening blare of brass, an appalling volume of sound pouring out like boiling metal....  But here was Rudolph; the performance was at an end; it was time to go home.

“I took the liberty of searching for—­for Miss Jannan’s address,” the other told him.  Well, and why not!  “Mr. Provost and Mrs. Jannan are away for a week.”  Howat hoped that Kingsfrere would not turn up with his flat face.  He was conscious of smiling at a memory the exact shape of which escaped him—­something humorous that had happened to the pasty youth.  A refreshing air came in at the open windows, and he struggled for a full, satisfying breath.  The relief of what he dimly recognized as oxygen followed.  The nurse moved to the door and Mariana entered.