Then she began to recite the greatest of the penitential psalms.
'Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice.' And by long habit, yet with some dim hope of peace, Sister Giovanna responded: 'Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.' They said it to the end, verse answering verse, and the prayer of the King-Poet stilled the throbbing of hurts too deep to heal.
Two hours after she had fainted in the hall, Sister Giovanna was doing her work in the hospital again as usual.

A wonderful amount of physical resistance can be got out of moral conviction, and there is no such merciful shelter for mental distress as a uniform, from the full dress of a field-marshal to a Sister of Charity's cornet.
Of the persons who had been witnesses of the scene, the Doctor and Ugo Severi could be trusted, and Princess Chiaromonte was too much afraid of Giovanni to brew gossip about his love-affair.

There remained the two orderlies, who could not be prevented from telling the story to their wives and friends if they liked; but they were trusty, middle-aged men of good character; they shared the affectionate admiration for Sister Giovanna which almost every one in the Convent hospital felt for her, and they would be the very last to say a word to her discredit.

These circumstances account well enough for the fact that the story did not get into the newspapers at the time.
Sister Giovanna went back to her work, but she did not go near Ugo Severi, and she gave strict orders that his brother, if he came to see him again during the day, was to be accompanied to the door of the room by an orderly.

As Ugo had swallowed nothing but a cup of black coffee before coming to the hospital, and was therefore in a condition to take ether, Pieri had given notice that he would operate on the injured foot at two o'clock.