She had asked him a question, and, absorbed in the pure delight of looking at her, he had not comprehended or answered.  She flushed sensitively, accepting his silence as refusal, and he came out of his trance hastily.

“I beg your pardon; I did not quite understand your question, Miss Hollis—­I mean, Dr. Hollis.”

“I asked you if you minded my noting your pulse,” she said.

He stretched out his right hand; she stripped off her glove, laid the tip of her middle finger on his wrist, and glanced down at the gold watch which she held.

“I am wondering,” he said, laughing uncertainly, “whether you believe me to be ill.  Of course it is easy to see that you have found something unusual about me—­something of particular interest to a physician.  Is there anything very dreadful going to happen to me, Dr. Hollis?  I feel perfectly well.”

“Are you sure you feel well?” she asked, so earnestly that the smile on his lips faded out.

“Absolutely.  Is my pulse queer?”

“It is not normal.”

He could easily account for that, but he said nothing.

She questioned him for a few minutes, noted his pulse again, looked closely at the bluish circles under his eyes.  Naturally he flushed up and grew restless under the calm, grave, beautiful eyes.

“I—­I have an absolutely new and carefully sterilized thermometer—­” She drew it from a tiny gold-initialed pocket case, and looked wistfully at him.

“You want to put that into my mouth?” he asked, astonished.

“If you don’t mind.”

She held it up, shook it once or twice, and deliberately inserted it between his lips.  And there he sat, round-eyed, silent, the end of the thermometer protruding at a rakish angle from the corner of his mouth.  And he grew redder and redder.

“I don’t wish to alarm you,” she was saying, “but all this is so deeply significant, so full of vital interest to me—­to the world, to science—­”

“What have I got, in Heaven’s name?” he said thickly, the thermometer wiggling in his mouth.

“Ah!” she exclaimed with soft enthusiasm, clasping her pretty ungloved hands, “I cannot be sure yet—­I dare not be too sanguine—­”

“Do you mean that you want me to have something queer?” he blurted out, while the thermometer wiggled with every word he uttered.

“N-no, of course, I don’t want you to be ill,” she said hastily.  “Only, if you are ill it will be a wonderful thing for me.  I mean—­a—­that I am intensely interested in certain symptoms which—­”

She gently withdrew the glass tube from his lips and examined it carefully.

“Is there anything the matter?” he insisted, looking at the instrument over her shoulder.

She did not reply; pure excitement rendered her speechless.

“I seem to feel all right,” he added uneasily.  “If you really believe that there’s anything wrong with me, I’ll stop in to see my doctor.”