He could not collect his mind; he could not remember what she had said exactly; he could not think what to answer; indeed, he could not think at all.

There had been a likeness to his phantastic lady-love of the sea; then it was gone again; but it left him with all his thoughts confounded.

At length--because he felt that he must look like a fool indeed--he spoke, stammering the first thing that occurred to him: "The patient that I have seen did not appear to be in a house that was ill-ventilated or--or--that is, he was isolated from the rest of the family." He perceived that the lady had not the slightest knowledge of what it was that had really confused him.

He knew that in her eyes, in the eyes of the maidens, it must appear that her home-thrust had gone to his heart, that he had changed the subject because too weak to be able to answer her.

He was mortified at this, but he could not retrace his steps in the conversation, for she had already answered him.
The household he had already visited, she said, with a few others, had helped her by following sanitary rules; and then she went on talking about what those rules were, what could and could not be done in the circumstances of the families affected.
As she talked on, Caius knew that the thing he had thought must be false and foolish.