THE WATER-GARDEN Just how long I was entirely unconscious I do not know.

For after I began to come to myself at intervals which grew shorter, for periods which grew longer, I was too weak to move a muscle or to utter a syllable.

I lay, flaccid, in my big, deep, soft bed, very dimly aware of Occo or of Agathemer hovering about me, generally recalled to consciousness by an eggspoonful of hot spiced wine being forced through my slow-opening lips and teeth.
How many times I was sufficiently conscious to know that I was being fed, but too ill for any thoughts whatever, I cannot conjecture.

When I began to have mental feelings the first was one of dazed confusion of mind, of groping to recollect where I was and why and what had last happened to me.
When I recalled my last waking experience I lay bathed in sleepy contentment.

I could think connectedly enough to reason out, or my unthinking intuitions presented to me without my thinking, the conviction that, if Vedia could recognize me in a big pool among scores of swimmers, if her perceptions in regard to me were acute enough and quick enough for her and her alone to notice that I had fainted in the water, if she cared enough for me and was sufficiently indifferent to what society might say of her, for her to rescue me and sit down on the pavement of the _tepidarium_ and pillow my wet head on her wet thighs till I showed signs of life, I need not worry about whether Vedia cared for me or not.