A somewhat nauseous gift, the girl raised her arms and received it gently, without haste,--the saffron body appearing yet more squalid against the Palladian whiteness of her tunic, plain and cool as drapery in marble.
"It may live," she said.

"We'll do what we can." And followed by the black-trousered woman, she moved quickly away to offer battle with death.

A plain, usual fact, it seemed, involving no more surprise than repugnance.

Her face had hardly altered; and yet Rudolph, for the first time in many days, had caught the fleeting brightness of compassion.
Mere light of the eyes, a half-imagined glory, incongruous in the sharp smell of antiseptics, it left him wondering in the cloister.

He knew now what had been missing by the river.