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.
I don’t know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems to me I shall always be ashamed.
It was in seeing her that he felt what their interruption had been, and that they met across it even as persons whose adventures, on either side, in time and space, of the nature of perils and exiles, had had a peculiar strangeness. He wondered if he were as different for her as she herself had immediately appeared.
It seemed to her at last that she would do well to take a book; formerly, when heavy-hearted, she had been able, with the help of some well-chosen volume, to transfer the seat of consciousness to the organ of pure reason.
I shall always think of you; I shall never think of anyone else. I came to England simply because you are here; I couldn’t stay at home after you had gone: I hated the country because you were not in it. If I like this country at present it is only because it holds you.
The English are the most romantic people in the world.
But my impression dates from the very first hour we met. I lost no time, I fell in love with you then. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now that’s not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels for evermore.
He was gathering everything up, everything he should tell her.
I don’t go off easily, but when I’m touched, it’s for life. It’s for life, Miss Archer, it’s for life.
The past came back to her in one of those rushing waves of emotion by which persons of sensibility are visited at odd hours.
But I think on the whole I would rather be myself than you. I’m quite content to be myself; I don’t want to change.
I know how you suffer, and that’s why I’m here.