"But I'm all right now," Barbara protested.
"That's good hearing," answered Dr. Gaisford, but none the less he persevered in his examination, unmoved by a flash of petulance, which he did not fail to note, and by a spasm of nervous, contrite amiability, which he noted no less carefully. At the end he was puzzled and dissatisfied.
"You say that there was a change this morning?" he asked Lady Crawleigh as he left.
"She was a different girl. Now she's as irritable and melancholy.... Doctor, is this simply the result of overwork, or is it something more?"
It was as far as her mother would unbend towards suggesting that Barbara had anything on her mind. The doctor guessed the purpose of her question, but he felt that she was better qualified to answer it than he was.
"What do you mean by 'something more'?" he asked.
"Oh, well.... You know...."
"If we can get her body right and her nerves right," he answered, "everything else will come right. She's very highly strung, she's been taking a great deal out of herself all her life; and the war deals such an all-round blow that, if there is a weak place, we're all of us bound to feel it."
He piled vagueness on vagueness and then took his leave. Barbara was suffering from more than overexcited nerves, but he could not yet diagnose her complaint. There was no suggestion of drink, no trace of drugs, but she had been in his care for several weeks and she refused to shew any improvement. With the best intentions, a woman in her state never told a doctor the truth about herself; and any doctor who had attended Barbara since childhood knew better than to waste his time in trying to make her confide in him.
"I'll come in again on Tuesday or Wednesday," he promised Lady Crawleigh on the door-step. "Then we can talk about sending her into the country. At present I think she'd only mope."