I asked the Nurse if she wanted anything.  I noticed that she had a vinaigrette in her lap.  Doubtless she, too, had felt some of the influence which had so affected me.  She said that she had all she required, but that if she should want anything she would at once let me know.  I wished to keep her from noticing my respirator, so I went to the chair in the shadow where her back was toward me.  Here I quietly put it on, and made myself comfortable.

For what seemed a long time, I sat and thought and thought.  It was a wild medley of thoughts, as might have been expected from the experiences of the previous day and night.  Again I found myself thinking of the Egyptian smell; and I remember that I felt a delicious satisfaction that I did not experience it as I had done.  The respirator was doing its work.

It must have been that the passing of this disturbing thought made for repose of mind, which is the corollary of bodily rest, for, though I really cannot remember being asleep or waking from it, I saw a vision—­I dreamed a dream, I scarcely know which.

I was still in the room, seated in the chair.  I had on my respirator and knew that I breathed freely.  The Nurse sat in her chair with her back toward me.  She sat quite still.  The sick man lay as still as the dead.  It was rather like the picture of a scene than the reality; all were still and silent; and the stillness and silence were continuous.  Outside, in the distance I could hear the sounds of a city, the occasional roll of wheels, the shout of a reveller, the far-away echo of whistles and the rumbling of trains.  The light was very, very low; the reflection of it under the green-shaded lamp was a dim relief to the darkness, rather than light.  The green silk fringe of the lamp had merely the colour of an emerald seen in the moonlight.  The room, for all its darkness, was full of shadows.  It seemed in my whirling thoughts as though all the real things had become shadows—­shadows which moved, for they passed the dim outline of the high windows.  Shadows which had sentience.  I even thought there was sound, a faint sound as of the mew of a cat—­the rustle of drapery and a metallic clink as of metal faintly touching metal.  I sat as one entranced.  At last I felt, as in nightmare, that this was sleep, and that in the passing of its portals all my will had gone.

All at once my senses were full awake.  A shriek rang in my ears.  The room was filled suddenly with a blaze of light.  There was the sound of pistol shots—­one, two; and a haze of white smoke in the room.  When my waking eyes regained their power, I could have shrieked with horror myself at what I saw before me.

Chapter IV The Second Attempt

The sight which met my eyes had the horror of a dream within a dream, with the certainty of reality added.  The room was as I had seen it last; except that the shadowy look had gone in the glare of the many lights, and every article in it stood stark and solidly real.