How good, she thinks, to have never been in an urgent rush to lose a limb. The thought feels absurd enough to nearly laugh,

but she suspects a hysteria at the edge of that that she ought not indulge. Says, instead, “A greater lead time can only be of benefit to Mssr Viktor’s work. Some, he has indicated, can only be done once the amputation itself is dealt with, but not all.”

For a moment, she lingers in a thought, pensive. Finally,

“Madame de Fonce had offered me her own, the first that she pressed me with these matters. I have never more strongly regretted foolish words spoken in haste than to have spoken to her of my own vanity on the matter. I’ve often fancied myself above it, you know; I have never been a devotee of fashion. I imagined,”

while they are being uncomfortably frank with one another,

“that you might understand how it is to be challenged in one’s self-perception.”