"As the Señor wishes, but the good amiable doctor, what should I say to him?"
"What you please, only don't let him come near me."
"And when the Señor is well there are many little matters to settle. The Consul and the Magistrate...."
"Not now. I am to have ten days in peace, and alone, or you don't get the money."
The man stood bowing and shuffling and muttering for some minutes. Then the thought of the £50 came before him too dazzling to resist, and with a final: "It shall be exactly as the Señor wishes," he withdrew.
And so now I lay alone. Ah, what a comfort solitude is!
Freedom and solitude! Are these not two sweet Sisters of Mercy?
How few of all worldly ills and sorrows can they not either cure or assuage? Or, rather, perhaps, ought one not to call them mates, from which the child, Content, is born?
I lay there, weak and suffering still, but a balm seemed poured all over me, for now I was alone.
I fell asleep after a time and did not wake till it was dark. I felt stronger, better. Sleep had nursed me in her own way through all the afternoon.
A lamp had been lighted on the table beside me and only needed turning up. There was a tray of food there and a carafe of water. I took a little of both and felt life stirring in all my veins, now that the paralysing grip of the deadly drugs they had been giving me was lifted off.
I lay still, gazing about the large, shadowy room and into the violet dusk of the square beyond the window, and then gradually sleep came over me again.
In less than an hour I started up from my bed, wide-awake. I thought I had been with Hop Lee. I looked round the room. All was just as I had seen it last. I sank back on my pillow. "It was only a vivid dream," I said to myself, and then fell to wondering what the dream had been. I could not remember. It seemed some communication had been made to my brain while I slept, that it had received very clearly, but now that I was awake it could not retain nor understand it, but it could, and did remember that I had dreamed of Hop Lee, and that it was a pleasant dream.
Yes, the man I had murdered had been with me, had spoken to me, and the impression was that of rest, of calm, of some aching self-reproach being appeased.