“O maior pecado, depois do pecado, é a publicação do pecado.”
“Ouça-me este conselho: em política, não se perdoa nem se esquece nada.”
“(...) era tão diversa de si mesma, ora isto, ora aquilo, que os dias iam passando sem acordo fixo, nem desengano perpétuo.”
“As estrelas são ainda menos lindas que os seus olhos, e afinal nem sei mesmo o que elas sejam; Deus, que as pôs tão alto, é porque não poderão ser vistas de perto, sem perder muito da formosura... Mas os seus olhos, não; estão aqui, ao pé de mim, grandes, luminosos, mais luminosos que o céu...”
“Should she go on? Or drop it? Maybe this was one of those things that people should keep to themselves, like a hatred of baby pandas or a passion for polka music. Everyone needs a secret or two.”
“Since I neither want not can influence the events of the world, my mission is to preserve the internal integrity and equilibrium of my mind; that will be in which the manor in which I recover the purity of the original act; I shall be my own citadel, and to it I shall retire to protect myself against a hostile and corrupt world. I shall be my own citadel and, within it, my own and only citizen.”
“Why now?”
He squeezed his eyes shut to deny the truth, but she deserved more. When he finally opened his eyes, he let her see it all. “Because I want you. I’ve always wanted you, Carina. I don’t deserve you, or this night, but the idea of another man touching you makes me want to beat the shit out of him.”
The smile that lit up her face punched straight through his chest. “Well, okay then. Let’s go.”
“And I want cabana boys named Raoul to rub
warm, fragrant oil all over me, from head to toe, all over my throat and chest and my legs and arms. I
want—”
Theo pushed the chair back on the deck and it made a loud scraping sound. He grabbed Lucy’s face
and kissed her hard, then rose up and placed her on her feet, taking her hand.
“Where are we going, Theo?”
“Shh.” He stroked her hair as he led her inside. “The name’s Raoul.”
“America, secure in its fortress of neutrality, watched the war at a remove and found it all unfathomable. Undersecretary of State Robert Lansing, number two man in the State Department, tried to put this phenomenon into words in a private memorandum. “It is difficult, if not impossible, for us here in the United States to appreciate in all its fullness the great European War,” he wrote. “We have come to read almost with indifference of vast military operations, of battle lines extending for hundreds of miles, of the thousands of dying men, of the millions suffering all manner of privation, of the wide-spread waste and destruction.” The nation had become inured to it all, he wrote. “The slaughter of a thousand men between the trenches in northern France or of another thousand on a foundering cruiser has become commonplace. We read the headlines in the newspapers and let it go at that. The details have lost their interest.”
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