“She searched her mind for a single day when it had felt good to be alive. There must have been one, surely?”

“It must have been perfectly dreadful to see a woman every day for five years, and not give her a pie, when you felt sure yours were better than she could make.”

“She herself had certainly never been more alive. She felt electric. She would not have been surprised if sparks had come crackling out of the tips of her sober gloves.”

“Because of course she had known she must go. She always did the thing because in obedience lay the integrity that God asked of her. If anyone had asked her what she meant by integrity she would not have been able to tell them but she had seen it once like a picture in her mind, a root going down into the earth and drinking deeply there. No one was really alive without that root.”

“God, the woman must have been a pain. When she was alive.”

“She told me later that she had made a kind of note of me in her mind, as, scanning the shelf for a particular book, one will sometimes have one's attention caught by another, take it down, glance at the title page and saying "I must read that, too, when I've the time," replace it and continue the search.”