Missing-Melania-gate needs to end now. No, the first lady doesn’t need to resurface in a smashing outfit at a public event with President Trump; the media and the Twitter mob just need to let her be.

This marks Day 22 that the nation has been deprived of a sighting of Melania Trump, after she spent five days at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center recovering from an embolization procedure on her kidney. She may just not feel like grimacing through an official duty right now or even getting her hair done. She may still not feel well, or could have additional health concerns we don’t know about. It’s none of our business.

Somehow America seems to be getting by. Yet the frenzy over her decision to lie low, which has become a feature on cable news and a conspiracy-theory-fest on social media, reflects poorly on an impatient, celebrity-crazed, publicity-fueled society constantly prowling for something new to click and comment on. It is a culture the fiercely private Melania shuns, the same one her husband has fed and thrived in.

Mrs. Trump addressed the lather Wednesday in a tweet: “I saw the media is working overtime speculating where I am & what I’m doing. Rest assured, I’m here @WhiteHouse w my family, feeling great, & working hard on behalf of children and the American people!”

It may have been the exclamation point, in addition to the familiar “media working overtime” phrase that President Trump is known to deploy in tweets, that had people wondering if the first lady is somehow incapacitated and that her husband wrote the message himself. Without photographic proof, the headlines demanded some. Comedian Sarah Silverman tweeted her doubts immediately: “Who is this? where’s Melania?” The internet collectively wondered if she had moved back to New York or was hiding after plastic surgery. Some ghastly person who goes by @ira tweeted the photograph of Kim Kardashian with Trump at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office and wrote, “You are Melania now.”

The reclusive Mrs. Trump was making plenty of public appearances in the weeks before her surprise hospitalization. In what may go down as her official, sparkling step into the spotlight she resists and her husband craves, the first lady hosted President and Mrs. Macron for a state visit in April, crushing it from minute one with her dramatic white Herve Pierre hat that dominated the day. At the Trumps’ first official state dinner it wasn’t hard to imagine, as Melania donned Chanel and spoke with Emmanuel and Brigitte in fluent French, who not only stole the show but was the show.

There is the simple fact that people just want to look at Mrs. Trump. Her glamour is mesmerizing -- combining a keen sartorial savvy with long elegant limbs, immaculate posture and the ability to glide down and up stairs or traverse lawns in 4-inch stilettos as if in stocking feet. But Melania is also a powerful magnet of fascination because she is the opposite of her husband -- steely and quiet and discreet. The picture of dignity.

Two days before the Macrons arrived, Mrs. Trump was crashing toward the deadline of her diplomatic debut, personally directing the painstaking details: 1,200 cherry blossom branches, herbs from the White House garden, the choice of the Clinton presidential china, and honey accompanying dessert produced by bees from a White House hive. And amid all that, she slipped off to a last minute, high-stakes solo act. The first lady ventured to the funeral of a predecessor, Barbara Bush, where her husband, the president of the United States, was not welcome. Photographs of her sitting with the Obamas, and smiling in a group picture of the most exclusive club in the world -- past presidents and first ladies -- went viral. But what few read about was her decision to bring staffers who were close to the Bush family to pay their respects in person. George Hainey, a former head maitre d’ at the White House, and current usher Buddy Carter accompanied Mrs. Trump on the trip. The Office of the First Lady didn’t publicize her beautiful act of grace. Melania Trump doesn’t seek credit.

But duty still calls. And like the official agendas of most modern first ladies, Melania’s campaign for youth well-being is predictably banal. As a reluctant spokesman, being a champion of something from the White House -- a place she resisted even moving to -- is especially awkward for Mrs. Trump. On May 7, Melania appeared alone in the Rose Garden to announce her “Be Best” campaign to improve the “social, emotional and physical health” of children and adolescents. It was non-specific enough, dealing with social media and opioid abuse and some other things, to get laughed at. The New Yorker headline, for example, was “The Childlike Strangeness of Melania Trump’s ‘Be Best’ Campaign.” President Trump’s Twitter trash talk, of course, is considered invalidating. Yet the first lady’s foray into cyber bullying, while married to the international poster child of juvenile online harassment, should attract respect rather than ridicule. Just like attending the funeral of Mrs. Bush, she makes it clear she will try to lead by her example -- in spite of her husband’s example.

Melania soldiers on, often unsmiling, in a public role under the tabloid veneer she willingly married into but which has worsened dramatically with her husband’s presidency. On Thursday, former House Speaker John Boehner cracked at a public event, “I think Donald promised Melania that he would not win. She didn’t have to worry about ever living in the White House. That’s probably why she doesn’t look real happy every day. Well, maybe one reason.”

It may be that Melania Trump is truly miserable, which would further the case for deference from the press. The only thing she has ever made clear is her passion and priority is her son Barron. He is still only 12 years old. She and her husband have separate bedrooms, she has made herself an internet meme because of the many times she has flicked his hand away from hers at moments of high ceremony, and she has signaled her distance during the abject humiliation of the Stormy Daniels revelation by sometimes taking her own car trips to Joint Base Andrews for trips, and to the U.S. Capitol on the night of the State of the Union.

There is enough noise and news to satiate bored Americans right now. Real progress in a potentially consequential, historic coming together with the North Koreans, and badly behaved broads like Samantha Bee and Roseanne Barr.

Melania’s husband, our president, vigorously stokes division to cement his hold on power. In the face of that we can, and should, agree, that she unites us. Let’s keep it that way.