At a time when his thoughts had been a good deal of a burden to him her sudden arrival, which promised nothing and was an open-handed gift of fate, had refreshed and quickened them, given them wings and something to fly for. Poor Ralph had been for many weeks steeped in melancholy; his outlook, habitually somber, lay under the shadow of a deeper cloud.
The broken charm of the world about was broken into smaller pieces.
I’ve thought of you perpetually, ever since I last saw you. I’m exactly the same. I love you just as much, and everything I said to you then is just as true.
People are proud only when they have something to lose, and humble when they have something to gain.
But for a nice girl you do attract the most unnatural people.
Verdi’s music did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre and walked homeward, without knowing his way, through the torturous, tragic streets of Rome, where heavier sorrows than his had been carried under the stars.
She sat with him at any rate, in the grey clearance – as sad as a winter dawn – made by their meeting.
It’s very pleasant to be so well treated where one had least looked for it.
There were immensities between you.
Do you imagine I can see you suffer and not say a word?
But he’s all in a muddle about himself, his position, his power, and indeed about everything in the world. He’s the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn’t know what to believe in.
And thus it seemed to her an act of devotion to conceal her misery from him. She concealed it elaborately; she was perpetually, in their talk, hanging out curtains and arranging screens.
You’ve not only dried up my tears; you’ve dried up my soul.
He goes very far, but it’s quite possible he doesn’t go far enough.
Isabel,” he went on suddenly, “I wish it were over for you.” She answered nothing; she had burst into sobs; she remained so, with her buried face. He lay silent, listening to her sobs; at last he gave a long groan.
Heaven deliver me from my friends!
I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think they ought to make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap.
She wished to say everything; she was afraid he might die before she had done so.
I shall find you delightful; I think you’re enchanting just as you are.
It’s as if he said to me: “I like you very much, but if it doesn’t please you I’ll never say it again.