Good thing he doesn't expect her to collapse into a blubbering mess, then. He considers where to go from there, whether to bow and mumble an awkward 'of course' and slip back out of the room, or to press the issue, or change the topic to something else. He wets his lips out of nervous habit and continues on. "To face ones personal fears and doubts in the heat of battle, in the physical Fade no less, and come out the other side? I believe that speaks volumes about the integrity and strength of the individuals of the Inquisition. To walk where few have walked since the ancient magisters thought to march into the City of the Maker, to face a literal Nightmare and to be besieged by demons."

He draws himself up a little taller, more sure. Feels his point speaks for itself. "I don't find it so unreasonable a thing to ask after a...colleague." Malcolm would not be so presumptuous as to consider himself a friend of famed Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast, Right Hand of the Divine, founder of the new Inquisition, (very distant) royalty.