t case, and looked wistfully at
him.

"You want to put that into my mouth?" he asked, astonished.

"If you don't mind."

She held it up, shook it once or twice, and deliberately inserted it
between his lips. And there he sat, round-eyed, silent, the end of the
thermometer protruding at a rakish angle from the corner of his mouth.
And he grew redder and redder.

"I _don't_ wish to alarm you," she was saying, "but all this is so
deeply significant, so full of vital interest to me--to the world, to
science--"

"_What_ have I got, in Heaven's name?" he said thickly, the thermometer
wiggling in his mouth.

"Ah!" she exclaimed with soft enthusiasm, clasping her pretty ungloved
hands, "I cannot be sure yet--I dare not be too sanguine--"

"Do you mean that you _want_ me to have something queer?" he blurted
out, while the thermometer wiggled with every word he uttered.

"N-no, of course, I don't _want_ you to be ill," she said hastily.
"Only, if you _are_ ill it will be a wonderful thing for me. I
mean--a--that I am intensely interested in certain symptoms which--"

She gently withdrew the glass tube from his lips and examined it
carefully.

"_Is_ there anything the matter?" he insisted, looking at the instrument
over her shoulder.

She did not reply; pure excitement rendered her speechless.

"I seem to _feel_ all right," he added uneasily. "If you really believe
that there's anything wrong with me, I'll stop in to see my doctor."

"Your doctor!" she repeated, appalled.

"Yes, certainly. Why not?"

"Don't do that! Please don't do that! I--why _I_ discovered this case. I
beg you most earnestly to let me observe it. You don't understand the
importance of it! You don't begin to dream of the rarity of this case!
How much it means to me!"

He flushed up. "Do you intend to intimate that I am afflicted with some
sort of rare and s-s-trange d-d-disease?" he stammered.

"I dare not pronounce upon it too confidently," she said with
enthusiasm; "I have not yet absolutely determined the nature of the
disease. But, oh, I am beginning to hope--"

"Then I _am_ diseased!" he faltered. "I've got _something_ anyhow; is
that it? Only you are not yet perfectly sure what it is called! Is that
the truth, Miss Hollis?"

"How can I answer positively until I have had time to observe these
symptoms? It requires time to be certain. I do not wish to alarm you,
but it is my duty to say to you that you should immediately place
yours