“At the simplicity of the gesture, he felt a pang: the raw nerve of his loneliness exposed.”

“The constant mental fight made him irritable. He had never had a temper before. Some days, he felt as if his entire body were a raw nerve, its membrane receptive even to the smallest passing slight.”

“He watched the aperture of the young women's lovely face close ever so slightly and felt a pang in his heart.”

“Then he closed his eyes and put his hands together again before his face, finger to finger. Johnny was struck by the kid's lack of pretension. There was a simplicity about the gesture that had been honed by use into beauty.”

“The Consul felt a pang. Ah, to have a horse, and gallop away, singing, to someone you loved perhaps, into the heart of all the simplicity and peace in the world; was that not like the opportunity afforded man by life itself? Of course not. Still, just for a moment, it had seemed that it was.”

“He felt a momentary pang of regret that he had not spent more time with his beloved wife. But it passed when he remembered that the reason he’d gone to sea in the first place was that he had never really liked his beloved wife.”