“Kinkade sketched the occasional nude woman, and was generous about passing the sketches around to the men and cheerful about accepting criticisms and suggestions, which he seldom incorporated, as he had his own vision. He signed them O.McCaucus-Bigg A new soldier was always puzzled by this, given that this wasn't Kinkade's name. "O.McCaucus-Bigg?" "Braggart, are you?" Kinkade would roar. "Not as big as mine,laddie!" A good joke, suitable for thirteen-year-old boys and bored sergeants and subalterns.”

“No, Kinkade,” Chase said thoughtfully. “I don’t think a woman can destroy you. You can’t be destroyed because…there’s nothing to destroy. I warrant that you just reflect whatever’s near you. Like a puddle of mud. You reflect honor if you’re near it. You reflect decay if you’re near it. Left to your own devices, you’ve no moral center at all, no concern except for your own pleasure. This is the result.”

“Do you think Kinkade is Welland-Dowd?" she wondered Chase burst into laughter so booming that every head on the street rotated, startled. Oh,God. She'd just understood when she'd said it aloud. Welland-Dowd. Well-endowed.”

“I love you," she murmured. The words ... it was as though an entire sun had exploded in his chest.He'd been ridiculous. His thrashing thoughts, his grand confusion and torment and helplessness -- it was only love, had always been love, he supposed. It was no precipice he stood at, or rather precipices have little meaning when one finally acknowledges that one has wings. Connor stepped off."I love you, too."Such grave, inadequate words for what it was he felt.”

“What happens next?" she whispered.Connor turned to her and smiled faintly. Always a question, that was Rebecca.There's more?" he said in mock wondermentRebecca dimpled.You know very well there is more."Tell me all about it," he encouraged.In Papa's book—"Tell me all about it without mentioning your papa.”

“He would ask nothing else from life if he would be allowed to protect and cherish her for the rest of his.”

“He supposed it would be considered pastoral-there were trees clustered in a meadow, with two muscular black cows and two improbably fluffy sheep arranged beneath them-and in the sky were two winged cherubs so fat that surely the miracle in question as how they have gotten aloft at all. They would have needed to have the wingspans of albatrosses, not those foolish wee flaps sprouting from their shoulders, he decided, irritated. One of the cows was looking up at them with what he fancied was an expression of surpise and alarm. Which was precisely the expression he would wear if he'd suddenly noticed two fat cherubs bearing down on him.”