"What!"

"It was malaria," he repeated politely.[33]

"I—I don't see how you could—could show it to him," she murmured, perplexed.

"Well, I'll tell you how I showed it to him. I made a little incision in my skin with a lancet; he made a smear or two——"

"A—what?"

"A smear—he put a few drops of my blood on some glass plates."

"Why?"

"To examine them under the microscope."

"Why?"

"So that he might determine what particular kind of malaria I had brought back with me."