Most of the faces glowed with health, and on all was manifest a simple contentment such as he had hitherto seen only in the eyes of children.

Representatives were here of every social rank, but the majority belonged to honourable families: high intelligence marked many countenances, but not one showed the shadow of anxious or weary thought.
These are men, said Basil to himself, who either have never known the burden of life, or have utterly cast it off; they live without a care, without a passion.

And then there suddenly flashed upon his mind what seemed an all-sufficient explanation of this calm, this happiness.

Here entered no woman.

Woman's existence was forgotten, alike by young and old; or, if not forgotten, had lost all its earthly taint, as in the holy affection (of which Marcus had spoken to him) cherished by the abbot for his pious sister Scholastica.