"In the spring I was eight-and-twenty," he said.
Hannah Sedge got up off that floor. She did it slowly, and she went and stood at the open window with her back to him. And she stood there for about a quarter of a minute, and what she was doing—she told him this about a fortnight later and never told anybody else—was making absolutely certain that she was not about to be cruel to a man at four in the morning out of her own temper.
"Eight years," she said.
"Hannah—"
"Eight years and four months. The first physician in the west of England examined you three times in one spring and gave you a sentence, and no human being has looked at your chest since, and you are six-and-thirty and still here."
"He is the first physician in the west of England," said Nicholas Ware, "and he was extremely thorough, and he had no reason on earth to be wrong."
"Then why has nobody looked at you since?"
"There is no point!" His voice went up and broke, and he had to stop.
Hannah stood at that window and made herself not turn around until he had it back.