“I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.”

“I don't care much for diamonds,' Nicola had told him.'Have you ever been offered any?' he had asked, and he had been making fun of her, his face mocking.'Not that I can remember,' Nicola had admitted calmly.'And how would an offer be received?' he had asked, as though he knew the answer.'With a kick in the teeth,' Nicola had said, meeting his eye.”

“if she had ordered me to throw myself down then, I would have done it! If she had said it only as a joke, said it with contempt, spitting on me--even then I would have jumped!”

“His was the holiest face I ever saw. My very name turned holy on his tongue. If he had bade me rise and follow to the end of time, I would have gone. If he had bade me die for him, I would have died. When I deserved it least, God gave me most. I think it was the savior's face I saw.”

“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.“Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”

“I hated and admired this hunter. I once gave him my heart and soul. Since then, I had given him more and more of myself, but I never forgot his true nature and what he had done to me.”