“You will be quite well, Madame, on the day⁠—when it comes, and it rests entirely with you whether it comes today⁠—on which you realise that there is nothing wrong with you, and resume your ordinary life. You tell me that you have not been taking your food, not going out?”

“But, sir, I have a temperature.”

He laid a finger on her wrist.

“Not just now, at any rate. Besides, what an excuse! Don’t you know that we keep out in the open air and overfeed tuberculous patients with temperatures of 102?”

“But I have a little albumen as well.”