“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

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

“It's only that ye looked so beautiful, wi' the fire on your face, and your hair waving in the wind. I wanted to remember it.”

“Lord that she might be safe. She and my children.”

“One had known the care of other men from his earliest years, a part of the duty of his birthright; the other had come to it later, but both felt that burden to be the will of God, she had no doubt at all-both accepted that duty without question, would honor it, or die in trying. She only hoped it wouldn't come to that-for either of them.”