"Shall I put your parasol down?" he asked, stretching out his hand.

"No, thanks. I like holding it."

"I'm afraid you must tell me what are your symptoms."

"I feel a sort of general malaise."

"Is it a physical malaise?"

"Why not?" she said, almost sharply.

She smiled, as if in pity at her own childishness, and added
immediately:

"I can't say that I suffer actual physical pain. But without that one
may not feel particularly well."

"Perhaps your nervous system is out of order."

"I suppose every day you have silly women coming to you full of
complaints but without the ghost of a malady?"

"You must not ask me to condemn my patients. And not only women are
silly in that way."

He thought of Sir Henry Grebe, and of his own prescription.

"I had better examine you. Then I can tell you more about yourself."