But every sense began informing her that yesterday's experience was not a nightmare of her sleep, but a waking reality.

The morning sun was already pouring hot beams upon the thin roof over her head.

Through the wide cracks in the partition came the groans and the nauseating odors which had depressed her so on the day before.

Mingled with these was the smell of spoiled coffee and ill-cooked food floating in from the kitchen, where a detail of slovenly and untaught cooks were preparing breakfast.
She shuddered and opened her eyes.
The rude garniture of her room, thickly covered with coarse dust, and destitute of everything to make life comfortable, looked even more repugnant than it had the evening before.
The attack of sickness at heart at the position in which she found herself came on with renewed intensity, for the hatefulness of everything connected with the lot she had chosen seemed to have augmented during the passing hours.

She tried to gain a little respite by throwing one white arm over her eyes, so as to shut out all sight, that she might imagine for a moment at least that she was back under the old apple tree at Sardis, before all this sorrow had come into her life.
"It is not possible," she murmured to herself, "that Florence Nightingale, and those who assisted her found their work and its surroundings as unlovely as it is here.