“And a girl could give herself only in love. Mutual love. Otherwise she'd ruin herself for nothing. A girls body was a prize. It had to be more than asked for. It had to be earned, worshipped, and avowed.”

“A girl's body was a prize. It had to be more than asked for. It had to be earned, worshipped, and avowed.”

“She'd abandoned the animal she loved as she herself had been abandoned repeatedly in the past by people who had claimed to love her.”

“She tried to remind herself that beauty was only skin deep, but that didn't offer any helpful excuses when she was berating herself for never knowing what to say to people. There was nothing more depressing than an ugly girl with no personality.”

“In the final analysis, with Rene she had been an apprentice to love, she had loved him only to learn how to give herself, enslaved and surfeited, to Sir Stephen.”

“She'd been a silly girl who'd dreamed of love, and a stupid girl who'd declared love a fraud; but she'd never imagined that when she found it,it would be richer, more powerful than dreams, and the impossibility of keeping it more painful than the worst betrayal.”