‘Did you want me, sir?’ she asked.
‘I ventured, Miss Keeldar, to send for you—that is, to ask an interview of a few minutes.’
She waited; she plied her needle.
‘Well, sir’—not lifting her eyes—‘what about?’
‘Be seated, first. The subject I would broach is one of some moment. Perhaps I have hardly a right to approach it. It is possible I ought to frame an apology; it is possible no apology can excuse me. The liberty I have taken arises from a conversation with Henry. The boy is unhappy about your health—all your friends are unhappy on that subject. It is of your health I would speak.’
‘I am quite well,’ she said briefly.
‘Yet changed.’
‘That matters to none but myself. We all change.’
‘Will you sit down? Formerly, Miss Keeldar, I had some influence with you—have I any now? May I feel that what I am saying is not accounted positive presumption?’
‘Let me read some French, Mr. Moore, or I will even take a spell at the Latin grammar, and let us proclaim a truce to all sanitary discussions.’
‘No, no: it is time there were discussions.’
‘Discuss away, then, but do not choose me for your text. I am a healthy subject.’
‘Do you not think it wrong to affirm and re-affirm what is substantially untrue?’
‘I say I am well—I have neither cough, pain, nor fever.’
‘Is there no equivocation in that assertion? Is it the direct truth?’
‘The direct truth.’
Louis Moore looked at her earnestly.
‘I can myself,’ he said, ‘trace no indications of actual disease; but why, then, are you altered?’
‘Am I altered?’
‘We will try—we will seek a proof.’
‘How?’
‘I ask, in the first place, do you sleep as you used to?’
‘I do not; but it is not because I am ill.’
‘Have you the appetite you once had?’
‘No; but it is not because I am ill.’