'What is it?' he asked himself in wonder.

His thought consisted of these detached phrases, which he spoke verbally
to himself. Between-whiles he was conscious only of an almost
insupportable feeling of sickness, as a man feels who is being brought
from under an anaesthetic; also he was vaguely aware of a teeming stir
of activity, such as one may hear from a closed hive, within him.

They swung rapidly downhill. Siegmund still shuddered, but not so
uncontrollably. They came to a stile which they must climb. As he
stepped over it needed a concentrated effort of will to place his foot
securely on the step. The effort was so great that he became
conscious of it.

'Good Lord!' he said to himself. 'I wonder what it is.' He tried to examine himself. He thought of all the organs of his
body--his brain, his heart, his liver. There was no pain, and nothing
wrong with any of them, he was sure. His dim searching resolved itself
into another detached phrase. 'There is nothing the matter with me,'
he said.

Then he continued vaguely wondering, recalling the sensation of wretched
sickness which sometimes follows drunkenness, thinking of the times when
he had fallen ill.

'But I am not like that,' he said, 'because I don't feel tremulous. I am
sure my hand is steady.' Helena stood still to consider the road. He held out his hand before
him. It was motionless as a dead flower on this silent night.