It was only a temporary malady, an agonizing pain which had its origin in a sudden chill.

This chill was due, as the Young Doctor knew when he came, to a vitality which did not renew itself, which got nothing from the life to which it was sealed, which for some reason could not absorb energy from the stinging, vital life of the prairie world in the June-time.
In her sudden anguish, and in the absence of Joel Mazarine, she sent for the Young Doctor.

That in itself was courageous, because it was impossible to tell what view the master of Tralee would take of her action, ill though she was.

She was not supposed to exercise her will.
If Joel Mazarine had been at home, he would have sent for wheezy, decrepit old Doctor Gensing, whose practice the Young Doctor had completely absorbed over a series of years.
But the Young Doctor came.

Rada, the half-breed woman, had undressed Louise and put her to bed; and he found her white as snow at the end of a paroxysm of pain, her long eyelashes lying on a cheek as smooth as a piece of Satsuma ware which has had the loving polish of ten thousand friendly fingers over innumerable years.