The Virgin and the Gipsy

She lost her illusions in the collapse of her sympathies.

Be braver in your body, or your luck will leave you. . . . Listen for the voice of water.

Why are we all only like mortal pieces of furniture? Why is nothing important?

It is very much easier to shatter prison-bars than to open undiscovered doors to life.

She had to live. It is useless to quarrel with one's bread and butter. And to expect a great deal out of life is puerile.

She, who was bored almost to agony, and who had nothing at all to do, she had not time to think even, seriously, of anything. Time being, after all, only the current of the soul in its flow.

Like a great bog humanity swamped her, and she sank in, weak at the knees, filled with repulsion and fear of every person she met.

He knew his heart's core was a fat, awful worm. His dread was lest anyone else should know. His anguish of hate was against anyone who knew, and recoiled.

She was aware only of his silent figure, sitting like a shadow there on the log, with an enamel cup in his hand, drinking his coffee in silence. Her will had departed from her limbs, he had power over her: his shadow was on her.

And the gipsy man himself! Yvette quivered suddenly, as if she had seen his big, bold eyes upon her, with the naked insinuation of desire in them. The absolutely naked insinuation of desire made her life prone and powerless in the bed, as if a drug had cast her in a new molten mould.

Get engaged, to any man on earth? No, good heavens, nothing more ridiculous could be imagined!

Dimly, at the back of her mind, she was thinking: Why are we all only like mortal pieces of furniture? Why is nothing important?