“With her, too, I danced more easily now, in a freer and more sprightly fashion, even though not so buoyantly and more self-consciously than with the other. Hermine had me lead, adapting herself as softly and lightly as the leaf of a flower, and with her, too, I now experienced all these delights that now advanced and now took wing. She, too, now exhaled the perfume of woman and love, and her dancing, too, sang with intimate tenderness the lovely and enchanting song of sex.”

“It was as if she had more than learned it off by heart. Though. it was as if their memory, the memory of all the Corregidora women, was her memory too, as strong with her as her own private memory, or almost as strong. But now she was Mama again.”

“She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he understood her better, when she was the product of her parents. What she was now was what she herself had decided to become.”

“She became aware that she had thought the less of him because he had thought the more of her. She had worshipped this other man because he had assumed superiority and had told her that he was big enough to be her master. But now, -- now that it was all too late, -- the veil had fallen from her eyes. She could now see the difference between manliness and 'deportment.”

“You’re safe now .. .and I love you.”She lifted her face and turned to him, her eyes wide at his words, her lips soft and trembling. “I love you,too, Robert,” she said very quietly. “I shouldn’t, but I do.”

“I have always loved Elle. I love her now even more deeply than before, as the woman I wish to share my life with."~Sean O'Neill”