She liked him – she had liked him all the while; now anything might happen! She was ready – she had been ready always, waiting for him to speak. If he had not spoken she would have waited for ever; but when the word came she dropped like the peach from the shaken tree.
He should see nothing, he should learn nothing; for him she would always wear a mask.
He has made me believe in true love; I never did before!
There was a kind of violence in some of her impulses.
What could be more dreary than final interviews? One never said the things one wanted – one remembered them all an hour afterwards.
He was lost in wonder at the mystery of things.
The whole past is between them.
Deep in her breast she believed that he had invested his all in her happiness, while the others had invested only a part.
It really doesn’t matter where I am now. I’ve exhausted all remedies, I’ve swallowed all climates.
Fancy me between Scylla and Charybdis.
Ah, I must see Ralph!” Isabel wailed; not in resentment, not in the quick passion her companion had looked for; but in a tone of far-reaching, infinite sadness.
Isabel, as she herself grew older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts; there were days when the world looked black and she asked herself with some sharpness what it was that she was pretending to live for.
In Isabel’s mind today there was nothing clear; there was a confusion of regrets, a complication of fears.
One is that people, on the whole, had better not marry their cousins. Another is that people in an advanced stage of pulmonary disorder had better not marry at all.
He knew soon enough that it was of himself he was afraid, and that even, if he didn’t take care, he should infallibly be more so.
Nothing was a pleasure to her now; how could anything be a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown away her life? There was an everlasting weight on her heart – there was a livid light on everything.
But she had after all a better reason for coming to Rome than that she cared for it so little. Her friend easily recognized it, and with it the worth of the other’s fidelity. She had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because she had guessed that Isabel was sad.
I like so many things! If a thing strikes me with a certain intensity I accept it. I don’t want to swagger, but I suppose I’m rather versatile.
It has been everything for me to see you.
If you could see none but the people I like, my dear, you’d have a very small society.