“Poor Elinor! Willoughby on one side, Brandon on the other. She is quite entre deux feux.” Prudie had a bit of lipstick on her teeth, or else it was wine. Jocelyn wanted to lean across and wipe it off with a napkin, the way she did when Sahara needed tidying. But she restrained herself; Prudie didn’t belong to her. The fire sculpted Prudie’s face, left the hollows of her cheeks hollow, brightened her deep-set eyes. She wasn’t pretty like Allegra, but she was attractive in an interesting way. She drew your eye. She would probably age well, like Angelica Houston. If only she would stop speaking French. Or go to France, where it would be less noticeable.”

“She was sitting up now. My arm was around her and she was leaning back against me, and we were quite calm. She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things,”

“She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things.”

“She was a woman of a certain age. A woman who wanted a man, but for whom romance was like a foreign country she had not visited in some time. . . .In the mirror over the dresser in her bedroom, she stared at her face. Some of the silvering had worn off the mirror, and soft, dark streaks slanting across the glass gave her image the aspect of a cameo, delicate, but distinctly antique. . . .She would not speak with the waiter in French, nor would she order anything weird, such as squid. Certainly nothing that would be strong on her breath, like garlic, because what if. . . .? She hadn't been kissed in thirty years.”

“I missed her smile…the way she would roll her eyes when she thought I was being ridiculous…the quiet way she almost tiptoed when she walked that gave her away as a ballerina…the fact that she could probably give me a fairly decent ass-kicking if she set her mind to it. I missed it all.I missed her.”

“Dana had four beautiful eyes. She wore glasses. But her eyes were so beautiful that the glasses only made her prettier. With two eyes she was pretty. With four eyes she was beautiful. With six eyes she would have been even more beautiful. And if she had a hundred eyes, all over her face and her arms and her feet, why, she would have been the most beautiful creature in the world.”