“I learned that my new lover was hard, but always good. She did not tease. If you pursued her, she would reveal her sweetest secrets and uncover her hidden places. Yes, she would grant those who came to her by car a measured beauty. There were wonderful things to be seen from the road. Her lesser suitors would jump out of their autos, snapping pictures, trying to save memories before having them, and hurry on. But what can be seen from a road is more enticing than revealing – like a shapely woman whose fleshly mystery cannot be hidden by modest garments but is made more alluring. From the roadside her eyes would invite and challenge: “Will you pursue me?” I did. And though my pursuit cost me a lot – pain, humiliation, hunger and sleepless nights – she was good.”

“Her eyes were a rich dark brown that were so deep, they reminded me of my sleepless nights, awake, staring into complete darkness. I felt compelled to look deeper, searching for something inside her, but her soul was covered and her eyes would not show me.”

“I thought about my Willa, about her blind-smiling at me from the hospital bed where she laid and where she died a few hours later, thought about the girl my Willa was in the picture she’d shown me, smiling out from inside the old lady Willa on the night she died. I thought about that wild Willa picture, and about the certain order she’d pulled that picture and others out of her hatbox to share with me on the summer nights when we were doing our secret sharing. And I thought about people saving certain pictures for a reason, saving and discarding according to the self-told story of themselves, how mainly it had nothing to do with who they were in the everyday, but instead, who they were in their special caught moments. How they held onto those pictures, and they held.”

“What a good thing, for instance, it was that one princess should sleep for a hundred years! Was she not saved from all the plague of young men who were not worthy of her? And did not she come awake exactly at the right moment when the right prince kissed her? For my part, I cannot help wishing a good many girls would sleep till just the same fate overtook them. It would be happier for them, and more agreeable to their friends.”

“At night, the house thick with sleep, she would peer out her bedroom window at the trees and sky and feel the presence of a mystery. Some possibility that included her--separate from her present life and without its limitations. A secret. Riding in the car with her father, she would look out at other cars full of people she'd never seen, any one of whom she might someday meet and love, and would feel the world holding her making its secret plans.”

“I've met your cousin," he told her, and her veins turned to ice."Oh,really? When was that?""A little over two years ago.I'm afraid it wasn't a very pleasant encounter.""What a surprise," she said sarcastically. Then she couldn't resist asking, "What did you think of her?"Hawk watched her intently. "She seemed nice enough. She's no better at following orders than you are-and not nearly as pretty." He grinned broadly. It was the first real smile she'd seen."What would you like for dinner?" she asked, moving the subject to safer ground. Her cheeks burned from the compliment-or insult-she wasn't sure which.”

“I know a person who, though no poet, composed some verses in a very short time, which were full of feeling and admirably descriptive of her pain: they did not come from her understanding, but, in order the better to enjoy the bliss which came to her from such delectable pain, she complained of it to her God. She would have been so glad if she could have been cut to pieces, body and soul, to show what joy this pain caused her. What torments could have been set before her at such a time which she would not have found it delectable to endure for her Lord's sake?”