“Oh", she thought, "how horrible it is that people have to grow up-and marry-and change!”

“How wicked I was to wish that something dramatic would happen!' she thought. 'Oh, if we could only have those dear, monotonous, pleasant days back again! I would *never* grumble about them again.”

“Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way yet—never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man. Ay, there lay the sting. Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn’t possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellignton or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid.”

“People told her she hadn't changed much, in a tone which hinted they were surprised and a little disappointed she hadn't.”

“Oh, of course there's a risk in marrying anybody, but, when it's all said and done, there's many a worse thing than a husband.”

“If any person wants to see clearly just how much she has changed - whether for better or worse - let her revisit after some lapse of time any place where she has ones lived. She will meet her former self at every turn, with every familiar face, in every old recollection ... She will see how much she has gained in some respects, how much she has lost - irretrievably lost - in others.”

“War was a hellish, horrible hideous thing - too horrible and hideous to happen in the twentieth century between civilised nations.”