VII. The Next Morning

Suddenly he sat up in bed in his room at the Magnifique, gazing upon a
disconsolate Cooley in gray tweeds who sat heaped in a chair at the foot
of the bed with his head in his hands.

Mellin's first sensation was of utter mystification; his second was more
corporeal: the consciousness of physical misery, of consuming fever, of
aches that ran over his whole body, converging to a dreadful climax in
his head, of a throat so immoderately partched it seemed to crackle, and
a thirst so avid it was a passion. His eye fell upon a carafe of water
on a chair at his bedside; he seized upon it with a shaking hand and
drank half its contents before he set it down. The action attracted
his companion's attention and he looked up, showing a pale and haggard
countenance.

"How do you feel?" inquired Cooley with a wan smile.

Mellin's head dropped back upon the pillow and he made one or two
painful efforts to speak before he succeeded in finding a ghastly
semblance of his voice.

"I thought I was at Madame de Vaurigard's."

"You were," said the other, adding grimly: "We both were."

"But that was only a minute ago."

"It was six hours ago. It's goin' on ten o'clock in the morning."