"Do you know," I repeated, "what has happened to everything?"
"No," he said, looking up at me incuriously for the first time."
"There's some difference--"
"There's a difference." He smiled, a smile of unexpected pleasantness, and an interest was coming into his eyes. "I've been a little preoccupied with my own internal sensations. I remark an extraordinary brightness about things. Is that it?"
"That's part of it. And a queer feeling, a clear-headedness--"
He surveyed me and meditated gravely. "I woke up," he said, feeling his way in his memory.
"And I."
"I lost my way--I forget quite how. There was a curious green fog." He stared at his foot, remembering. "Something to do with a comet. I was by a hedge in the darkness. I tried to run. . . . Then I must have pitched forward into this lane. Look!" He pointed with his head. "There's a wooden rail new broken there. I must have stumbled over that out of the field above." He scrutinised this and concluded: "Yes. . . ."
"It was dark," I said, "and a sort of green gas came out of nothing everywhere. That is the last I remember."
"And then you woke up? So did I. . . . In
