“and if she wasn’t precisely pretty, she had a force of character that is often more attractive than simple beauty.”

“This was nonsense, he thought. The need of her was a physical thing, like the thirsty of a sailor becalmed for weeks on the sea. He'd felt the need before, often, often, in their years apart. But why now? She was safe; he knew where she was - was it only the exhaustion of the past weeks and days, or perhaps the weakness of creeping age that made his bones ache, as though she had in fact been torn from his body, as God had made Eve from Adam's rib?”

“With that height, plus a face of an ugliness so transcendant as to be grotesquely beautiful, it was obvious why she had embraced a religious life--Christ was the only man from whom she might expect embrace in return.”

“It hadn't occurred to him that if she had little else, it would be that much more important to Joan Findlay to cling to her one valuable possession-her pride.”

“She was the sort of girl called “bonny”—not beautiful, but lively and nicely made, with something about her that took the eye.”

“Why, what's the matter wi' the poor child?" she demanded of Jamie. "Has she had an accident o' some sort?""No, it's only she's married me," he said, "though if ye care to call it an accident, ye may.”

“I wondered what sort of man - or woman, perhaps? - had lain here, leaving no more than an echo of their bones, so much more fragile than the enduring rocks that sheltered them.”