If you do, you will suffer.' 'Horribly,' said the Mother Superior, unconsciously covering her eyes with one hand for a moment; she had seen men die of tetanus.
'You will give me anaesthetics,' Giovanni answered philosophically.
'Besides, I would rather bear pain for a day or two than go through life a cripple with an empty sleeve!' 'It is deliberate suicide,' said the Mother Superior sadly.
'I incline to think so, too,' echoed the surgeon, 'though I believe the priests do not exactly consider it so.' Though he was half paralysed by his injury, Giovanni Severi smiled grimly.
'It would be very amusing if I died with the priests on my side after all,' he said, 'and against our good Mother Superior, too! You don't know how kind she is, Doctor; she has sat up all night with me herself!' Pieri was surprised, and looked quietly at the nun, who immediately rose and went to the window, pretending to arrange the blinds better.
But there are moments when the truth seems to reveal itself directly to more than one person at the same time.

The surgeon, whose intuitions were almost feminine in their swift directness, guessed at once why the Mother did not answer: not only she had not sat up with Giovanni herself, but she had allowed Sister Giovanna to do so, and as the patient had not wakened and recognised his nurse, it was not desirable that he should now know the truth.

As for Giovanni himself, the certainty that came over him was more like 'thought-reading,' for neither he himself nor any one else could have explained the steps of reasoning by which he reached his conclusion.

It was probably a mere guess, which happened to be right, and was founded on a little anxious shrinking of the Mother Superior's head and shoulders when she crossed the room and went to the window, as if she had something to hide.
Giovanni saw it, and then his eyes met Pieri's for a moment, and each was sure that the other knew.
'I need not ask you,' Giovanni said, 'whether you are absolutely sure that I must die if you do not take off my arm at the shoulder ?' 'Humanly speaking,' replied the other gravely, 'I am quite sure that gangrene will set in before to-morrow morning, and that is certain death in your case.' 'Why do you say, in my case ?' 'Because,' Pieri answered with a little impatience, 'if it began in your foot, for instance, or in your hand, it would take some little time to reach the vital parts, and the arm or leg could still be amputated; but in your case it will set in so near the heart that no operation will be of any use after it begins.

Do you understand ?' 'Perfectly.