“...while Norah described to me her plans for carpets and curtains, or showed me the sample of bedspread material she had hung over a chair to see if she could live with it. When I began to know her, I wondered if their courtship had been, for her, something of the same -- my brother draped over a chair for the statutory length of time, to see if she could live with him. In that case she might have noticed that he did not really go with the surroundings; perhaps she did see this, but knew that he would fade to a better match.”

“But, with unintelligible nostalgia for a life she had never lived, knew that all would have been subtly and profoundly different had her husband greatly loved her.”

“They lived under supervision, a life without men. Dora knew no men. You could scarcely see how she might meet one, let alone come to know.”

“Sometimes, as now, her heart twisted and broke under his determination to wound her. At others, she was almost convinced that she felt nothing more for him, that he had overdrawn on her endurance: then she would stay silent for awhile, almost at peace, beyond his reach, not knowing whether she had been utterly vanquished or become completely invincible. However, it required merely some slight attention on his part to restore all her apprehensions - for these extremes of feeling only existed within the compass of her love.""In One's Own House”

“Dark had meant Dora, had meant words and events sordid with self. Struggling to the light from Dora's darkness, Caro had acquired conscience and equilibrium like a profound, laborious education. Exercise of principle would always require more from her than from persons nurtured in it, for she had learned it by application of will. Caro would never do the right thing without knowing it, as some could.”

“Paul said, 'You always had some contempt for me.''Yes.''And love too.''Yes.' A flicker over her stare was the facial equivalent of a shrug. 'Now you have a wife to give you both.”

“The sweetness that all longed for night and day. Some tragedy might be idly guessed at--loss or illness. She had the luminosity of those about to die.”