"How did you feel when you awoke? Did you have a headache, or were you groggy or dry-mouthed?"

"I felt nothing at first. I lay for a long time looking at the ceiling without moving. I felt numb. I felt as if I had become lost in time, as if I had been there forever and would be there forever. I don't know how long I would have lain there, but the door opened and a man came in. He had a small china bowl with food in it, a kind of sweetened gruel. He sat me up in bed and gave me the bowl and a spoon, a wooden spoon. He was strange."

"In what way?"

"Not his appearance. It was ordinary enough. He was a little shorter than I, clean-shaven, bland; maggoty. Brown eyes. I didn't much care about him, but he-he was afraid of me."

"How could you tell?"

"He kept his distance. He would not look me in the face. When I moved suddenly, he flinched. When he had to look me in the face, his eyes, they questioned me. It was then that I began to question myself. When I had eaten the gruel he took the bowl and went away, locking the door behind him. I wanted to get up and look around then, but I began to feel sleepy and dizzy. I fell asleep.

"When I woke again there were two there, the maggoty one and another: tall, older; grey, beak-nosed, with eyes like a hawk, bright and blank and unreadable. They had brought another bowl of gruel. The grey man squatted down by the bed. 'Who are you?' he asked me. I could not answer; I could not think. I lay silent and watched. 'You see,' he said, standing up and addressing the other, 'there's nothing to worry about.' "

"And what did you think of him?" inquired Holmes. "Was he also afraid of you?"

"No. He was merely-careful. He made me feel strange, angry. I wanted to memorize his face, so that if I saw him again..." she broke off abruptly.