“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think the state of your health, Mr. Delamayn, is quite so satisfactory as you may be disposed to consider it yourself.”

Geoffrey turned to his admirers and adherents with a roar of derisive laughter.  The admirers and adherents all echoed him together.  Arnold and Blanche smiled at each other.  Even Sir Patrick looked as if he could hardly credit the evidence of his own ears.  There stood the modern Hercules, self-vindicated as a Hercules, before all eyes that looked at him.  And there, opposite, stood a man whom he could have killed with one blow of his fist, telling him, in serious earnest, that he was not in perfect health!

“You are a rare fellow!” said Geoffrey, half in jest and half in anger.  “What’s the matter with me?”

“I have undertaken to give you, what I believe to be, a necessary caution,” answered the surgeon.  “I have not undertaken to tell you what I think is the matter with you.  That may be a question for consideration some little time hence.  In the meanwhile, I should like to put my impression about you to the test.  Have you any objection to answer a question on a matter of no particular importance relating to yourself?”

“Let’s hear the question first.”

“I have noticed something in your behavior while Sir Patrick was speaking.  You are as much interested in opposing his views as any of those gentlemen about you.  I don’t understand your sitting in silence, and leaving it entirely to the others to put the case on your side—­until Sir Patrick said something which happened to irritate you.  Had you, all the time before that, no answer ready in your own mind?”

“I had as good answers in my mind as any that have been made here to-day.”

“And yet you didn’t give them?”

“No; I didn’t give them.”

“Perhaps you felt—­though you knew your objections to be good ones—­that it was hardly worth while to take the trouble of putting them into words?  In short, you let your friends answer for you, rather than make the effort of answering for yourself?”

Geoffrey looked at his medical adviser with a sudden curiosity and a sudden distrust.

“I say,” he asked, “how do you come to know what’s going on in my mind—­without my telling you of it?”

“It is my business to find out what is going on in people’s bodies—­and to do that it is sometimes necessary for me to find out (if I can) what is going on in their minds.  If I have rightly interpreted what was going on in your mind, there is no need for me to press my question.  You have answered it already.”

He turned to Sir Patrick next

“There is a side to this subject,” he said, “which you have not touched on yet.  There is a Physical objection to the present rage for muscular exercises of all sorts, which is quite as strong, in its way, as the Moral objection.  You have stated the consequences as they may affect the mind.  I can state the consequences as they do affect the body.”