“She did not want to know what charmhe had used to make her love him so deeply. She did not want to know it wasn’t real.”

“That made love—not grace—the magic ingredient. Then anew thought hit her. Perhaps love was grace. A shiver wentup her spine. What did that make anger? The antithesis ofgrace?”

“It was as though she had some alter ego who told her she did not belong here. But she had never known anywhere else, and where else could there be?”

“Charlotte was used to all the marks of war: the shabbiness of things, bad food, shop queues, posters about the war effort, people with worried faces, people dressed in black. She was used to seeing the wounded men from the hospital with their bright blue uniforms and bright red ties, the colours, she thought, if not the clothes of Arthur's soldiers. Such things did not disturb her, and the war seemed quite remote. But this disturbed her, the grotesque kind of circus that came now. It did not seem remote at all, nor did it fit with her vague ideas of war gained from those books of Arthur's she had read, with their flags and glory and brave drummer boys. How could you dare to become a soldier, knowing that you might end like this? There were men like clowns with white heads, white arms, white legs, men with crutches, slings, and bloodied bandages, and all so distressingly like men you would expect to see walking down the street, two armed, two legged, in hats instead of bandages and suits of black not battered khaki. Some came on stretchers borne by whole and ordinary men, some hobbled and leaned on whole ordinary arms. Most had mud dried thick across their clothes, and all came from the dark station's mouth with the spewings of trains behind, the clankings, thumpings, grindings, the sounds like great devils taking in breaths and blowing them out again.”

“She did not know what it was about him that had always made her want to see him broken.”

“I don't know who I am, I don't know what I'm like, how can I know what I want? I only know that whether I'm good or bad, whether I'm a bitch or not, whether I'm strong or weak or contemptible or a bloody martyr - I mean whether I'm fat or thin, tall or short, because I don't know - I want to be happy.”

“Even her footsteps did not seem to belong to her. The night seized and transformed them, just as it transformed the greenhouses they passed from useful places for growing things into cold night palaces.”