He became more interested in Odette. It appeared that she had nursed one of his comrades through a bad affair at Surville. Men cut to pieces, gaping wounds, sensational operations, and the agonized resignation of those young men did not produce in her one-quarter of the pitying revolt which was caused her by the eternal privation from light which a living, healthy being might suffer by her side. In his presence she recovered something of her manner of speaking with the wounded, but her natural frankness was not animated by that smiling perspective of a still possible future which a woman perceives at the bedside of a soldier, even one who has lost a limb. The nurse speaks no falsehood when she says: "My little friend, when you are well, when you once more see your home, your village--" But when she is constrained to omit from her vocabulary the radiant word see, how constrained and powerless she is! Blinded men always awoke in her extreme compassion when she met them in the street, when they were spoken of in her presence. She remembered how tears had risen to her eyes, how her throat had contracted, when Simone had described that wedding at the Madeleine, the handsome couple coming down the steps, the bridegroom all adorned with decorations, in the face of an admiring crowd who suddenly perceived that he could not see. But she had never before been obliged to carry on a conversation with one of those beings whom the deprivation of a sense makes more different from ourselves than the loss of many limbs. She instinctively managed it very well, though she was moved to the last degree; she knew at once how to speak to one who had been greatly afflicted--as she would have done to a normal man, without appearing to notice his condition. The captain was grateful to her for it, and it was evident that he was much more at ease with Odette, on this first meeting, than he had ever succeeded in being with Clotilde, whom he had known a long time. Clotilde, incapable of dominating her selfishness, could have been brought by no human power to the point of forcing herself to an act not agreeable to herself. Her husband, who was pained by her attitude, said to her: "See how gracious Odette is!" The blinded man went away with his friend, evidently happy for having chatted with a pretty and afflicted woman, for having been able to induce her to act as if neither she nor he had been touched by misfortune. "Judge," said Clotilde when the two men had gone out, "to what point I am stupid and benumbed, and what a service you have rendered me! But I beg pardon for having inflicted it upon you." "When a thing of this sort pains me," said Odette, "I do not know what I feel. I have noticed that at the hospital, especially in the early days. I don't deny that it seems as if I were being rubbed the wrong way, but there is a sort of miraculous cure that acts of itself, penetrating like a drop of balm, to the very depths of the wound."