I have met few who repelled me, but you--your voice, your eyes--they pierce me to the heart--and if you were near I could not speak as I must....

and oh, talking hurts me so! But before you go--you are a leech--let me know this one thing--I have many messages to leave for him ere I die....

Will it kill me to talk ?" Again the prophetess found no other words in answer except the brief: "It is as you say," and this time they sounded harsh and ominous.
While wavering between the duty which, as a physician, she owed the sufferer and the impulse not to refuse the request of a dying woman, she read in old Nun's eyes an entreaty to obey Kasana's wish, and with drooping head left the tent.

But the bitter words of the hapless girl pursued her and spoiled the day which had begun so gloriously and also many a later hour; nay, to her life's end she could not understand why, in the presence of this poor, dying woman, she had been overpowered by the feeling that she was her inferior and must take a secondary place.
As soon as Kasana was left alone with Nun and Ephraim, and the latter had flung himself on his knees beside her couch, while the old man kissed her brow, and bowed his white head to listen to her low words, she began: "I feel better now.

That tall woman...