"You surely want to be out in the sun," she added quickly. "You don't want to stay indoors. Besides I am better now."
"Yes," he said, with his fingers on the handle of the door leading to the drawing-room. "One always feels a little stronger when one is excited. That is only natural. The presence even of the meanest stranger always causes a little excitement."
She sighed. She began to wish he would sit down again. "But I assure you I feel quite well now." The conviction was gradually stealing over her that it was ignominious to be ill in the neighbourhood of this young man. She asked herself whether he had seen Leonetta, and what he thought of her, and she was seized by an incontrollable shudder.
"You soon will be quite well," said Lord Henry gravely.
"How can you tell!" she exclaimed, smiling incredulously and with some satisfaction too as she noticed that he left the door and returned to his seat.
"Well, any way," he continued, "tell me just exactly what you feel. Try to explain to me exactly how you feel just before you fall. I need hardly tell you that it is of course not natural for a girl of your age to have these sudden fits of collapse. Can you tell me about it?"
There was a pause, and then she replied, with a strain of defiance in her voice: "I frankly don't know. It's something I can't explain."
"Is it something you frankly don't know, or something you can't explain?" he demanded.
She looked up as she heard her reply repeated in that form, and was a little discomfited.
"Will you try?" he added. "It is just possible, though, I admit, not probable, that I may be able to help you when I know."