“My fingers tightened on my waxed paper cup, sure now I knew why Minias was sitting at a table sipping coffee with me. I had a password. I had a reason to trade. I had a major problem.”

“Rule number one: wear loose clothing. No Problem. Rule number two: no alcohol for the next three days. Slight problem. I'll miss my evening glass of wine but figure I can go for three days without and compensate later.And the last rule: absolutely no coffee or tea or caffeine of any kind.Big problem. This rule hits me like a sucker punch and sure would have knocked me to the floor had I not been sitting there already. I'm eying the exits, plotting my escape. I knew enlightenment came at a price, but i had no idea the price was this steep. A sense of real panic sets in. How am I going to survive for the next seventy-two hours without a single cup of coffee?”

“I took my coffee into the dining room and settled down with the morning paper. A woman in New York had had twins in a taxi. A woman in Ohio had just had her seventeenth child. A twelve-year-old girl in Mexico had given birth to a thirteen-pound boy. The lead article on the woman's page was about how to adjust the older child to the new baby. I finally found an account of an axe murder on page seventeen, and held my coffee cup up to my face to see if the steam might revive me.”

“I knew now what my earlier passion for Harry had hidden from me. That although I had bedded him as a free woman I was as bound as if I were the slave. For it was not a free choice. I had wanted him because he was the Squire, not for himself.... And it was no free choice, because I could not choose to say "No." My safety and security on the land meant I had to keep my special, costly hold on its owner. I paid him rent as surely as the tenants who came to my round rent table with their coins tied up in a scrap of cloth. When I lay on my back, or strode round the room threatening him with every imaginable, ridiculous torment, I was paying my dues. And the knowledge galled me.”

“I strode toward Mr. Coffee with lust in my eyes. We'd had a thing for quite some time now Mr. Coffee and I...”

“But now my problems had been set loose. They could be anywhere at any time and I was just like everyone else I knew: almost positive that there was something profoundly and undiagnosably wrong with me.”