“No, it’s not hurting me at all, at all.” She smiled up at him; a smile that she felt to be beatific, half-hypnotised.
“Would you like to see what I’ve been doing?”
“I would.”
“There—on the left—that big molar——”
He put a little mirror into her hands. And she that hadn’t looked in a glass, hardly, since the day of her final vows, twelve years ago!
Gracious, what a colour she had! Plum-colour, that was her face. And the smile that had felt beatific, looking foolish and uncertain, as though she were ashamed of something. The glass turned dim as her heavy breathing struck it.
Would she perhaps have been breathing into his face that way all the time, and she never thinking of such a thing?
The face in the glass looked redder than ever. Mother of Mercy, this weather! The heat of it! And the holy habit no less than five smelly thicknesses of serge, and not wearing thin yet, though on the back of her year in and year out.
“That’s the last stopping, Sister. I shan’t have to trouble you again.”
“Amn’t I to come to you any more then?”