She was preoccupied with her own thoughts; pressing thoughts they must have been.

She passed him as if he had been a stranger, her eyes on the tray.

Worshipping, he stood, and saw her turn the corner at the head of the flight; then with a full heart he went back to his place.

His time would come.
And she?
At the door of Basterga's room she paused and stood long in thought, gazing at the rushlight she carried on the tray--yet seeing nothing.

A sentence, one sentence of all those which Blondel had poured forth--not Blondel the austere Syndic, who had set the lads aside as if they had been schoolboys, but Blondel the man, trembling, holding out suppliant hands--rang again and again in her ears.
"It is health of body, though you be dying as I am, and health of mind, though you be possessed of devils!" Health of body! Health of mind! Health of body! Health of mind! The words wrote themselves before her eyes in letters of fire.