“As I stood there,hushed and still,I could swear that the house was not an empty shell but lived and breathed as it had lived before.”

“She would have stood by Giles’s side, and shaken hands with people, a smile on her face. I could not do that. I had not the pride, I had not the guts. I was badly bred.”

“She had to live in this bright, red gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die... I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe.”

“We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic - now mercifully stilled, thank God - might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion as it had before.”

“She knew that this was happiness, this was living as she had always wished to live.”

“An empty house can be as lonely as a full hotel" he said at length."The trouble is that it is less impersonal.”

“I had build up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth.”