“Would she be able to bear never seeing him again? Never in this life?”

“He would never know know her. Such intimacy but no communication, because words - even if she could speak or write them - could never explain her world to him.”

“I'm terrified that I will never be able to put him from my mind. I don't love him but I'm afraid that he will make it impossible for me ever to love anyone else.”

“This was it. This was what she had longed for throughout the lonely years of her girlhood.Suddenly she felt lonelier than she had ever felt.And so excited she could barely breathe,Tresham stepped up beside her, drew her arm through his again, set his free hand lightly over hers, and said not a word.She had never loved him more.”

“Now she realized she had never been kissed before. Not really. Not like this.Ah, never like this.”

“I am not sure what lonliness is," she said. "If it is not literally being solitary, is it the fear of solitude, of being alone with oneself? I feel no such fear. I like being alone.""What do you fear then?" he asked her.She glanced briefly at him and smiled, a fragile expression that spoke for itself even before she found words."Never finding myself again....”

“She had never believed in fate. She still did not. It would be nonsense of freedom of will and choice, and it was through such freedom that we worked our way through life and learned what we needed to learn. But sometimes, it seemed to her, there was something, some sign, to nudge one along in a certain direction. What one chose to do with that nudge was up to that person.”