"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—"