The red spots were there, burning in his cheeks, and his eyes were brilliant.

For a minute he wondered anxiously if he were feverish, if he were going to be ill, and, if so, what his mother and sister would do.

He even felt his own pulse as he stood there, and discovered that it was quick.

Then, all at once, his face in the glass looked out at him with a flash as from some sub-state of consciousness in the depths of his own being, which he could not as yet quite fathom.
"I don't know what ails me," he muttered, as he turned away.

He felt as he had when puzzling over the unknown quantity in an algebraic equation.