That last change in living man is rare enough, but when once seen is not to be forgotten.

There is something in the faces of the very, very old which hardly suggests age at all, but rather the vague possibility of a returning prime.

Only the hands tell the tale, with their huge, shining, fleshless joints, their shadowy hollows, and their unnatural yellow nails.
The old man lay quite still, breathing softly through his snowy beard.
Unorna came to his side.

There was something of wonder and admiration in her own eyes as she stood there gazing upon the face which other generations of men and women, all long dead, had looked upon and known.
The secret of life and death was before her each day when she entered that room, and on the very verge of solution.

The wisdom hardly gained in many lands was striving with all its concentrated power to preserve that life; the rare and subtle gifts which she herself possessed were daily exercised to their full in the suggestion of vitality; the most elaborate inventions of skilled mechanicians were employed in reducing the labour of living to the lowest conceivable degree of effort.