“Because she was seventeen, and still alive, against thousands of years' worth of odds.Because she knew enough to fear what the future would bring.”

“At the beauty of what she had stumbled onto, at the fear that something terrible would happen because she was not vigilant enough. She cried at the fear of something so good that she would not be brave enough to bear it.”

“Phyllis, then seventeen, had grown into a lovely girl, although she was still in school uniform.Thus, Hera made it known that her beautiful daughter`s virginity was once more for sale & she had set the asking price at twenty thousand dollars. She would use the proceeds from the sale to clear her debts, & the surplus, she would give to Vicky in compensation for the three thousand dollars she had paid four years earlier to preserve Phyllis` virginity.[MMT]”

“It was not the passion that was new to her, it was the yearning adoration. She knew she had always feared it, for it left her helpless; she feared it still, lest if she adored him too much, then she would lose herself, become effaced, and she did not want to be effaced, a slave, like a savage woman. She must not become a slave. She feared her adoration, yet she would not at once fight against it.”

“But for now, she would lie in her husband's arms, her eyes closed and her body still against his, thinking that if this was all she ever had, it would be enough.”

“Fight for the only thing she knew was good enough, noble enough, powerful enough to be worth risking everything... Love.”