“While he gave Ella enormous credit for summing the situation so succinctly, part of him was still waiting for her to crumple on the floor in a heap. “Yes it does. But please, don’t be frightened–”“Oh pack it in,” she snapped, re-lacing the top of her bodice. “You’re not marrying a wilting sunflower you know.”

“And it was no shame to her that she so dreamed. It was no shame that she called before her, one by one, those who had asked her to cross with them the threshold (of marriage) and those who might still ask her. It was no shame that, while her heart said always, "no," she still waited - waited for one whom she knew not, but only knew that she would know him when he came. And it was no shame to her that, even while this was so, she saw herself in the years to come a wife and mother. ”

“When a wisp of fog blew by her she laughed and reached out her hands to it. When the wind blew she turned to it and opened her bodice, letting it caress and kiss her breasts, for she never knew when it might be him, and still she wanted nothing more than to please him utterly.”

“You still with your floozy girlfriend?” Ah, there is was. The elephant in the car…He gave her an incredulous look. “Obviously not.”She smacked him on his arm. “Don’t look at me like I asked a stupid question. Because it not a stupid question at all, and you damn well know it.”“Fine.”“So you broke up with her?”“Yes,” he said sharply.“Way to find your balls, man,” Ada congratulated him and sat back in her seat.”

“She glanced over her shoulder as she made her way into the restaurant, as though to make sure I was still waiting for her. You crazy girl, don’t you know I’d wait for you forever?”

“Her heart became a bird, trapped inside the glass box of her chest, flapping violently into wall after invisible wall, crumpling into a heap of broken hollow-bones on the transparent floor.”