“Martin is your best friend, isn't he?' a sweet and well-intentioned girl once said when both of us were present: it was the only time I ever felt awkward about this precious idea, which seemed somehow to risk diminishment if it were uttered aloud.”

“Listen to me," he said, and to her dismay he stepped closer. "When I first met you," he said, "I had no idea you were one of us. How could I? But I knew that you were different than that phony friend of yours. Not just another pretty girl, but somebody special.”

“People were intrinsically selfish, and many hated the idea of a woman in charge of the Institute. They would not put themselves at risk for her. Only a few weeks ago he would have said the same thing about himself. Now, knowing Charlotte, he realized to his surprise, the idea of risking himself for her seemed an honor, as it would be to most Englishmen to risk themselves for the queen.”

“But only in order to know if you, as you really are now, see yourself as you once were with all the illusions that were yours then, with all the things both inside and outside of you as they seemed to you - as they were then indeed for you. Well, sir, if you think of all those illusions that mean nothing to you now, of all those things which don't even seem to you to exist any more, while once they were for you, don't you feel that - I won't say these boards - but the very earth under your feet is sinking away from you when you reflect that in the same way this you as you feel it today - all this present reality of yours - is fated to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow?”

“I didn't feel that way about it. I had been playing with death for some time. I can't say we were the best of friends but we were well acquainted.”

“Both the children were looking up into the Lion's face as he spoke these words. And all at once (they never knew exactly how it happened) the face seemed to be a sea of tossing gold in which they were floating, and such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered into them that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good, or even alive and awake, before. And the memory of that moment stayed with them always, so that as long as they both lived, if ever they were sad or afraid or angry, the thought of all that golden goodness, and the feeling that it was still there, quite close, just round some corner or just behind some door, would come back and make them sure, deep down inside, that all was well.”