They are the nearest to you who were so sick.

Is it not so ?" "I don't know," I answered again.

"In my illness it seemed to me that you were the nearest." "About Bastin's words I can guess," she went on.

"But I ask again--what has Bickley been saying to you about me?
Of the first part, let it be; tell me the rest." I intended to evade her question, but she fixed those violet, compelling eyes upon me and I was obliged to answer.
"I believe you know as well as I do," I said; "but if you will have it, it was that you are not as other human women are, and that he who would treat you as such, must suffer; that was the gist of it." "Some might be content to suffer for such as I," she answered with quiet sweetness.

"Even Bastin and Bickley may be content to suffer in their own little ways." "You know that is not what I meant," I interrupted angrily, for I felt that she was throwing reflections on me.
"No; you meant that you agreed with Bickley that I am not quite a woman, as you know women." I was silent, for her words were true.
Then she blazed out into one of her flashes of splendour, like something that takes fire on an instant; like the faint and distant star which flames into sudden glory before the watcher's telescope.
"It is true that I am not as your women are--your poor, pale women, the shadows of an hour with night behind them and before.