The words, acid and intolerable, that Rand expected, did not seem to come easily to the Major's dry lips.

He looked small, thin, and frozen, grey and drawn of face, as though the basilisk had confronted him.

When at last he spoke, it was in a curiously remote voice, lucid and emotionless.

"Well, why not?
All beliefs die--die and rot! A vain show--and this, too, was of the charnel!" He turned upon Rand as if he would have struck him, then drew back, made in the air an abrupt and threatening gesture, and with a sound like a stifled cry passed the other and entered the house.

Rand heard him go down the hall, and the closing of the library door.
The young man's heart was hot and sore.