I fainted again.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WATER-GARDEN
Just how long I was entirely unconscious I do not know. For after I began
to come to myself at intervals which grew shorter, for periods which grew
longer, I was too weak to move a muscle or to utter a syllable. I lay,
flaccid, in my big, deep, soft bed, very dimly aware of Occo or of
Agathemer hovering about me, generally recalled to consciousness by an
eggspoonful of hot spiced wine being forced through my slow-opening lips
and teeth.
How many times I was sufficiently conscious to know that I was being fed,
but too ill for any thoughts whatever, I cannot conjecture. When I began
to have mental feelings the first was one of dazed confusion of mind, of
groping to recollect where I was and why and what had last happened to me.
When I recalled my last waking experience I lay bathed in sleepy
contentment. I could think connectedly enough to reason out, or my
unthinking intuitions presented to me without my thinking, the conviction
that, if Vedia could recognize me in a big pool among scores of swimmers,
if her perceptions in regard to me were acute enough and quick enough for
her and her alone to notice that I had fainted in the water, if she cared
enough for me and was sufficiently indifferent to what society might say
of her, for her to rescue me and sit down on the pavement of the
_tepidarium_ and pillow my wet head on her wet thighs till I showed signs
of life, I need not worry about whether Vedia cared for me or not.
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