," she added quickly. "You don't
want to stay indoors. Besides I am better now."

"Yes," he said, with his fingers on the handle of the door leading to
the drawing-room. "One always feels a little stronger when one is
excited. That is only natural. The presence even of the meanest stranger
always causes a little excitement."

She sighed. She began to wish he would sit down again. "But I assure you
I feel quite well now." The conviction was gradually stealing over her
that it was ignominious to be ill in the neighbourhood of this young
man. She asked herself whether he had seen Leonetta, and what he thought
of her, and she was seized by an incontrollable shudder.

"You soon will be quite well," said Lord Henry gravely.

"How can you tell!" she exclaimed, smiling incredulously and with some
satisfaction too as she noticed that he left the door and returned to
his seat.

"Well, any way," he continued, "tell me just exactly what you feel. Try
to explain to me exactly how you feel just before you fall. I need
hardly tell you that it is of course not natural for a girl of your age
to have these sudden fits of collapse. Can you tell me about it?"

There was a pause, and then she replied, with a strain of defiance in
her voice: "I frankly don't know. It's something I can't explain."

"Is it something you frankly don't know, or something you can't
explain?" he demanded.

She looked up as she heard her reply repeated in that form, and was a
little discomfited.

"Will you try?" he added. "It is just possible, though, I admit, not
probable, that I may be able to help you when I know."

"Well--" she began, determined if possible that he at least should never
know the truth.

"Yes?" he interjected eagerly.

"Directly after lunch the day before yesterday," Cleopatra pursued, "--I
must tell you we had curried chicken for lunch,--I felt a heavy
sensation in the pit of my stomach. I felt sick and giddy, my hands grew
cold, and about tea-time, I was walking in this very room, and my knees
gave way."

He looked at her beneath lowered brows, as he tugged at his mesh of
hair. "So you think it is all a fit of indigestion," he said.

She wondered whether he knew that she was lying. "Yes," she said.

There was a pause, and he looked away from her.

"Remember, Miss Delarayne," he muttered after a while, "that it will be
difficult to start me off on a false scent, even if it is as savoury as
curried chicken."

Cleopatra star