cked in.
Even his unbelief instinctively placed Sister Giovanna higher in the
scale of goodness than Angela Chiaromonte; he was an unbeliever, but
not a scoffer, for somehow the rule of honour influenced him there,
too. Nuns could really be saints, and were often holy women, and the
fact that they were mistaken, in his opinion, only made their
sacrifice more complete, since they were to receive no reward where
they hoped for an eternal one; and he no longer doubted that Sister
Giovanna was as truly good in every sense as any of them. What must
she not have felt, less than an hour ago, when he had entered the
room, telling her roughly that she was in his power, beyond all reach
of help? Yet he had cherished the illusion that he was an honourable
man, who would never take cruel advantage of any woman, still less of
an innocent girl, far less, still, of a nursing nun, whose dress alone
would have protected her from insult amongst any men but criminals.

In his self-contempt he hung his head as he sat alone by the table,
half-fancying that if he raised his eyes he would see his own image
accusing him. Sister Giovanna herself would have been surprised if she
could have known how complete her victory had been. His god had
forsaken him in his great need, and though he could not believe in
hers, he was asking himself what inward strength that must be which
could make a woman in extremest danger so gentle and yet so strong, so
quick to righteous anger and yet so ready to forgive what he could
never pardon in himself.

CHAPTER XVI

Sister Giovanna's nerves were good. The modern trained nurse is a
machine, and a wonderfully good one on the whole; when she is
exceptionally endowed for her work she is quite beyond praise. People
who still fancy that Rome is a mediaeval town, several centuries behind
other great capitals in the application of useful discoveries and
scientific systems, would be surprised if they knew the truth and
could see what is done there, and not as an exception, but as the
general rule. The common English and American belief, that Roman nuns
nurse the sick chiefly by prayer and the precepts of the school of
Salerno, is old-fashioned nonsense; the Pope's own authority requires
that they should attend an extremely modern training-school where they
receive a long course of instruction, probably as good as any in the
world, from eminent surgeons and physicians.

One of the first results of proper traini