Envy

He was a mystery to her, and every time she tried to solve him it caused her a little more pain. But when she tired to give him up he pursued her in her thoughts, stronger each time.

To look in the face of hard things and keep moving forward - that's what one has to do.

It is a truth universally acknowledge that there will always be a gentleman to dance with, except at just the moment when you require one most.

A young lady's most natural ally is her sister although sometimes our own relatives are as inscrutable to us as an antipodean.

The world is such a marvel-it gave you trials, but if you were still and concentrated, if you tried to do the right thing, it always provided you with salvation.

A young woman, newly wed, may find herself in the delightful position of wanting to do nothing without the company of her darling husband. She may indeed discover that she spends all her waking hours with her fellow to the exclusion of every other friend or family member. This is understandable, but wholly unacceptable, to society.

She was like a heroine in a novel that she herself was writing the character kept protesting that she was too strong for love and yet the narrator went on describing her desire.

There was plenty of life left and if he had to he would use it all to get her back. The time had passed for making promises to her-all that was left for him was to act.

She was full of some strange energy that morning. Her every movement had purpose and life and she seemed to find satisfaction in every little thing.

A man is made in the rough-and-tumble of the world a lady emerges from the flossy back rooms of her own imagination.

She was trying to sound tough and impatient, but she knew that vulnerable desire to be wooed was still brimming in her tone.

But I wanted to tell you before I left how completely abjectly sorry I am for all the pain I have caused you and that if I die you were the one true love of my life. By the time you read this I will be gone but please know I am still always at your side.... Yours forever Henery William Schoonmaker

It had been an awful thing to lose Henry the first time, to matrimony, but to discover what a false front he was capable of was another kind of blow, and it had left her almost speechless. Then there was the fury with herself—for she had known what Henry’s love was, and still she had gone back to suffer a little more at his hands.

Even when a girl is married she still never completely leaves her mother and father's home.

She found herself longing for home-not just for the hotel but for New York and all the real novels that she could lose herself in there.

Good night.' Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn't possibly withstand any more.

Henry turned his hat in his hands but went on looking at Diana in a way that made her want to crawl into his arms and stay there forever.

That was how the heroine of a book would play it and Diana was still writing her own story the best heroines she'd always believed took their fate into their own hands.

Life was a short window and there was no sense in doing the wrong thing over and over even if it was so difficult to stop.

Always stay sharp on railways and cruise ships for transit has a way of making everything clear.

She thought of Henry and Diana on the stoop gazing at each other with the confusion and sadness of two puppies who have just stumbled into their first puddle and not yet come to understand what has happened to them and found that she wanted to lie extravagantly.

They were all dressed in their finest as though life really were some magical stage play in which every moment ought to be illuminated with its own bright spotlight.

What was it about that short creature with her wild hair and spurious air of purity and why would anyone much less two men love her and to such disastrous ends.

Henry closed his eyes and imagined the sweet petulant woundedness with which she had stared at him on the beach. He felt a little proud that she could love him.

Henry was thinking of the younger Holland sister of the way she could go from being an impetuous girl to a knowing woman in a few seconds and never lose the stars in her eyes.

I know that I might die but that seems a happier end than being without you and anyway it seems to me that looking in the face of hard things and still being able to move forward even when the end includes grave danger and the possibility of death is the mark of a man.

She had believed him to be hers, time and again, but still she could not stay the feeling that he might at any moment slip through her fingers.

She saw now that he was like an illusionist who captivated women with a little sleight of hand and once she had seen the mechanism it had lost all power for her.

Henry wondered not for the first time if her blood ran red or black.

After Henry's treatment of her she wasn't sure that men could honestly love women but she wanted to believe it. She wanted to be told pretty things and for the frightening clip of her heart to slow to something more reasonable.