"Oh, no," she said, "I don't want to be examined. I know my heart and my lungs and so on are sound enough."
"At any rate, allow me to feel your pulse."
"And look at my tongue, perhaps!"
She laughed, but she pulled off her glove and extended her hand to him. He put his fingers on her wrist, and looked at his watch. Her skin was cool. Her pulse beat regularly and strongly. From her, a message to his lightly touching fingers, flowed surely determination, self-possession, hardihood, even combativeness. As he felt her pulse he understood the defiance of her life.
"Your pulse is good," he said, dropping her hand.
During the short time he had touched her, he seemed to have learnt a great deal about her.
And she--how much had she learnt about him?
He found himself wondering in a fashion unorthodox in a doctor.
"Mrs. Chepstow," he said, speaking rather brusquely, "I wish you would kindly explain to me exactly why you have come here to-day. If you don't feel ill, why waste your time with a doctor? I am sure you are not a woman to run about seeking what you have."
"You mean health! But--I don't feel as I used to feel. Formerly I was a very strong woman, so strong that I often felt as if I were safe from unhappiness, real unhappiness. For Schopenhauer was right, I suppose, and if one's health is perfect, one rises above what are called misfortunes. And, you know, I have had great misfortunes."
"Yes?"
"You must know that."
"Yes."
"I didn't really mind them--not enormously. Even when I was what I suppose nice people called 'ruined'--after my divorce--I was quite able to enjoy life and its pleasures, eating and drinking, travelling, yachting, riding, motoring, theatre-going, gambling, and all that sort of thing. People who are being universally condemned, or pitied, are often having a quite splendid time, you know."
"Just as people who are universally envied are often miserable."
"Exactly. But of late I have begun to--well, to feel different."
"In what way exactly?"
"To feel that my health is no longer perfect enough to defend me against--I might call it ennui."
"Yes?"
"Or I might call it depression, melancholy, in fact. Now I don't want--I simply will not be the victim of depression, as so many women are. Do you realise how frightfully women--many women--suffer secretly from depression when they--when they begin to find out that they are not going to remain eternally young?"
"I realize it, certainly."
"I will not be the victim of that depression, because it ruins one's appearance and destroys one's power. I am thirty-eight."