“They climbed up into the carriage and were on their way. Henry caught her bonnet on the doorframe as she was getting in, a circumstance which caused her to mutter most ungraciously under her breath. Dunford thought he heard her say, "Bloody bleeding blooming bonnet," but he couldn't be certain.”

“Thirty minutes later we were in Aunt Gene's carriage, Pam compulsively adjusting her bonnet, me meditating upon all of the ways it might be possible to kill myself with the in-cab stylus.”

“(Second kiss)Only a kiss?It was staggering.Her mind was lost to time and place, as if nothing existed beyond his divine mouth. He discarded her bonnet and tangled his fingers in her hair. She whimpered, clutching at his lapels, yet he refused to relent. Mercilessly, he intensified the kiss, pulling her so far in; submerging her in so much sensationthat Mary thought she would drown in the pleasure of it.”

“Somebody up there is deuced mad at me," she yelled, "and I want to know why!"The heavens opened in earnest and within seconds she was soaked to the skin."Remind me never to question Your purposes again," she muttered ungraciously, not sounding particularly like the God-fearing young lady her father had raised her to be. "Clearly You don't like to be second-guessed."Lightning streaked through the sky, followed by a booming clap of thunder. "Damn!" she grunted, her bonnet sagged against her eyes, blocking her vision. She yanked it off, looked at the sky, and yelled, "I am not amused!"More lightning."They are all against me," she muttered,"All of them." Her father, Sally Foxglove, Mr. Tibbett, whoever it was who controlled the weather—More thunder.”

“Her fingers dug into the doorframe she leaned on, hoping and praying that he would just step out of the shadows and kiss her the way he had done so often in her dreams.”

“Her eye, her ear, were tuning forks, burning glasses, which caught the minutest refraction or echo of a thought or feeling .... She heard a deeper vibration, a kind of composite echo, of all that the writer said, and did not say.”