He had begun to specialize in gynecology and it increased his scepticism.
Then suddenly, one evening, when he least looked for it, least wanted it, he saw his divinity incarnate.

Rhoda had appealed to him as the supreme expression of Nature's will to live.

That was the instantaneous and visible effect of her.

Rhoda was the red flower on the tree of life.
At St.Sidwell's, that great forcing-house, they might grow some vegetables to perfection; whether it was orchids or pumpkins he neither knew nor cared; but he defied them to produce anything like that.

He was sorry for the vegetables, the orchids and the pumpkins; and he was sorry for Miss Quincey, who was neither a pumpkin nor an orchid, but only a harmless little withered leaf.