“I want to marry you, Malda - because I love you - because you are young and strong and beautiful - because you are wild and sweet and - fragrant, and - elusive, like the wild flowers you love. Because you are so truly an artist in your special way, seeing beauty and giving it to others. I love you because of all of this, because you are rational and highminded and capable of friendship - and in spite of your cooking!”“But - how do you want to live?”“As we did here - at first,” he said. “There was peace, exquisite silence. There was beauty - nothing but beauty. There were the clean wood odors and flowers and fragrances and sweet wild wind. And there was you - your fair self, always delicately dressed, with white firm fingers sure of touch in delicate true work. I loved you then.”

“Do I love you because you're beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you? Am I making believe I see in you, a woman too perfect to be really true? Do I want you because you're wonderful, or are you wonderful because I want you? Are you the sweet invention of a lover's dream, or are you really as beautiful as you seem?”

“Do I love you because you're beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?”

“I don't love you because you're beautiful, you're beautiful because I love you.”

“Do you love me because I’m beautiful, or am I beautiful because you love me?”

“Because I love you. Don't you get it? Not because Cassandra is a part of you and Coroebus is a part of me. I love you because you are Nadira. The strange beautiful Nadira. The Nadira that has such hatred for me it kills to see the anger in your eyes whenever you even glance at me. I love Nadira. Not Cassandra. I love you.”