“Her father had taught her about hands. About a dog's paws. Whenever her father was alone with a dog in a house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world! A bouquet! Great rumours of travel! She would pretend disgust, but the dog's paw was a wonder: the smell of it never suggested dirt. It's a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so's garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen--a concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.”

“For the first time, he allowed himself to think of the day when they might part, of what would come of her. He could not imagine a day without hearing the soft, sultry sound of her voice, of smelling roses and finding himself completely distracted by her scent, by the gentle sway of her hips, the soft brush of her hair against his skin. Her smiles alone were worth a king's ransom.He would send her into a world where a hundred men would be eager to snatch up what he had tossed away so carelessly. They would not care if she ever smiled. Aye, he knew what would become of her. But what would become of him?”

“I happened to look up and there it was. All over and done with, at last. I sat on for a few moments with the ball in my hand and the dog yelping and pawing at me. (Pause.) Moments. Her moments, my moments (Pause.) The dog's moments.”

“Hatred had invaded her entire being; every cell in her body had hatred in it. She wondered if everyone could smell it on her. It smelled like death and coffee, like lilies and dirt, and it permeated her.”

“They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her.”

“Why, that dog is practically a Phi Beta Kappa. She can sit up and beg, and she can give her paw -- I don't say she will but she can.”