Gradually memory and consciousness once more reasserted
themselves, and he became aware that he was lying in bed. But
this was a slow process of intense mental effort, and was as
laboriously and logically built up of premises and deductions as
were his theological theses learned twenty years before in his
seminary. There was the sheet below his chin; there was a red
coverlet (seen at first as a blood-coloured landscape of hills
and valleys); there was a ceiling, overhead, at first as remote
as the vault of heaven. Then, little by little, the confused
roaring in his ears sank to a murmur. It had been just now as the
sound of brazen hammers clanging in reverberating caves, the
rolling of wheels, the tramp of countless myriads of men. But it
had become now a soothing murmur, not unlike the coming in of a
tide at the foot of high cliffs--just one gentle continuous note,
overlaid with light, shrill sounds. This too required long
argument and reasoning before any conclusion could be reached;
but it was attained at last, and he became certain that he lay
somewhere within sound of busy streets. Then rashly he leapt to
the belief that he must be in his own lodgings in Bloomsbury; but
another long slow stare upwards showed him that the white ceiling
was too far away.

The effort of thought seemed too much for him; it gave him a
sense of inexplicable discomfort. He determined to think no more,
for fear that the noises should revert again to the crash of
hammers in his hollow head. . . .

He was next conscious of a pressure on his lip, and a kind of
shadow of a taste of something. But it was no more than a shadow:
it was as if he were watching some one else drink and perceiving