“I am not going to live, and I can choose to be as much for her as I can be, to burn as brightly for her as I wish, and for a shorter time, than to burden her with someone only half-alive for a longer time. It is my choice, William, and you cannot make it for me.”

“There are times when I wish I could go back and change the course of my life. Make different choices...But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on. Do you remember that I told you that at Spence?”

“This is new for me. I'm learning how to have a realtionship with someone other than Ashton. I made a horrible mistake. It was like a relapse. But you," I reached up and tucked the tear dampened hair that had worked its way loose behind her ear. "You touch a place inside of me that Ashton never did. I feel things with you I never felt for her. I loved her for a very long time. I can't help the fact I still want to be there if she needs me. Next time there is a choice to make it will be you I choose first. I can promise you that.”

“I am going to die of love....daroga....I am dying of love .... That's how it is... I loved her so! And I love her still...daroga.....and I am dying of love for her, I tell you! if you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her...It was the first ...time, daroga, the first time I ever kissed a woman.. Yes, alive... I kissed her alive.... And she looked as beautiful as if she had been dead!”

“But how am I to live in the meantime?' I wailed.'Tis for you to decide,' he said. 'You can be her enemy and make yourself miserable by it, or you can endure it. If 'twere me, I'd choose endurance.”

“The purpose was, that I would go to Biddy, that I would show her how humbled and repentant I came back, that I would tell her how I had lost all I once hoped for, that I would remind her of our old confidences in my first unhappy time. Then, I would say to her, "Biddy, I think you once liked me very well, when my errant heart, even while it strayed away from you, was quieter and better with you than it ever has been since. If you can like me only half as well once more, if you can take me with all my faults and disappointments on my head, if you can receive me like a forgiven child (and indeed I am so sorry, Biddy, and have as much need of a hushing voice and a soothing hand), I hope I am a little worthier of you than I was --not much, but a little. And Biddy, it shall rest with you to say whether I shall work at the forge with Joe, or whether I shall try for any different occupation down in this country, or whether we shall go away to a distant place where an opportunity awaits me, which I set aside when it was offered, until I knew your answer. And now, dear Biddy, if you can tell me that you will go through the world with me, you will surely make it a better world for me, and me a better man for it, and I will try hard to make it a better world for you.”