“She felt drawing further from her and further from her an Archduke,(she did not mind that)a fortune,(she did not mind that)the safety and circumstance of married life,(she did not mind that)but life she heard going from her, and a lover.”

“Grow up? Get herself straightened out? Her mind reeled from the verbal battering. No matter what she did, her father would tell her she was wrong. Worthless. Undeserving.”

“Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.”

“She pressed her hand against her chest. No heart. So where did the love she felt come from?”

“...she felt in her mind the consciousness that she was entitled to hold a higher rank from her merit, than the arbitrary despotism of religious prejudice permitted her to aspire to.”

“She did not want to read this book from start to finish, or rather, she thought perhaps it did not want her to. Instead she practiced the art of bibliomancy, trusting the book to show her what it wanted her to know.”