In his mind's eye, he again beheld her at his bedside, at the time when he had so narrowly escaped death, nursing him with fraternal hands, with the smiling, compassionate grace of a sexless angel, in whom there was something more than a comrade, something of a woman left.

However, the thought never occurred to him that there was religion, belief, behind her.
"Oh! I will help you as much as you like, Sister," he replied.

"I belong to you, I shall be so happy to serve you.

You know very well what a debt of gratitude I have to pay you." In a pretty way she raised her finger to her lips so as to silence him.
Nobody owed her anything.

She was merely the servant of the ailing and the poor.
At this moment a first patient was making her entry into the Sainte-Honorine Ward.