"You are in excellent spirits," I observed, "if you are not in very good health."
"No, believe me," she answered. "The pleasure of seeing you again enlivened me for a moment; but I am really rather down."
I had been considering her attentively from a professional point of view while she was speaking, and saw that this was true. The brightness which animated her when she entered faded immediately, and then I saw that her face was thin and pale and anxious in expression. Her eyes wandered somewhat restlessly; her attitude betokened weakness. She had a little worrying cough, and her pulse was unequal.
"What have you been doing with yourself lately?" I asked, turning to my writing table and taking up a pen, when I had ascertained this last fact.
"Dreaming," she said.
The answer struck me. "Dreaming," I repeated to myself, and then aloud to her, while I affected to write. "Dreaming?" I said. "What about, for example?"
"Oh! the Arabian Nights, the whole thousand and one of them, would not be long enough to tell you," she replied. "I think my dreams have lasted longer already."
"Are you speaking of day-dreams?" I asked.
"Yes."
"You imagine things as you sit at work, perhaps!"