Ten I
A voice said:
“Drink this.”
Norma was shivering. Her eyes had a dazed look. She shrank back a little in the chair. Thecommand was repeated. “Drink this.” This time she drank obediently, then choked a little.
“It’s—it’s very strong,” she gasped¹.
“It’ll put you right. You’ll feel better in a minute. Just sit still and wait.”
The sickness and the giddiness which had been confusing her passed off. A little colour cameinto her cheeks, and the shivering diminished. For the first time she looked round her, noting hersurroundings. She had been obsessed² by a feeling of fear and horror but now things seemed to bereturning to normal. It was a medium-sized room and it was furnished in a way that seemed faintlyfamiliar. A desk, a couch, an armchair and an ordinary chair, a stethoscope on a side table andsome machine that she thought had to do with eyes. Then her attention went from the general tothe particular. The man who had told her to drink.
She saw a man of perhaps thirty-odd with red hair and a rather attractive ugly face, the kind offace that is craggy but interesting. He nodded at her in a reassuring³ fashion.
“Beginning to get your bearings?”
“I—I think so. I—did you—what happened?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“The traffic. I—it came at me—it—” She looked at him. “I was run over.”
“Oh no, you weren’t run over.” He shook his head. “I saw to that.”
“You?”
“Well, there you were in the middle of the road, a car bearing down on you and I just managedto snatch you out of its way. What were you thinking of to go running into the traffic like that?”
“I can’t remember. I—yes, I suppose I must have been thinking of something else.”
“A Jaguar⁴ was coming pretty fast, and there was a bus bearing down on the other side of theroad. The car wasn’t trying to run you down or anything like that, was it?”
“I—no, no, I’m sure it wasn’t. I mean I—”
“Well, I wondered—It just might have been something else, mightn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it could have been deliberate, you know.”

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