"Oh." Now Mary shows some kind of emotion, lifting her little hands -- pale and delicately boned -- up to her mouth, making a little steeple to catch her breath inside. A show of recognition for the terror of consumption.

...But truthfully, the disease fascinates her. The idea of the body eating itself from the inside out, of handkerchiefs full of blood. Of bodies withering away into a pathetic little nothingness--

"How difficult." She doesn't say terrible. "You seem so young, how difficult."