“It was heavy, and I staggered when I lifted it; but it was strangely satifying to have a real burden upon my shoulders – a kind of counterweight to my terrible heaviness of heart.”

“But it's the simple and the good that are meant to suffer in this world—ain't it, though!”

“But the more I think it, the more I want her, the more my desire rises and swells.”

“She said, 'It is filled with all the words for how I want you.”

“Don't you be thinking,' she says, 'on things that are done and can't be changed. All right, dear girl? You think of the time to come.”

“I felt that thread that had come between us, tugging, tugging at my heart—so hard, it hurt me.”

“It made me giddy. It made me blush, worse than before. It was like liquor. It made me drunk. I drew away. When her breath came now upon my mouth, it came very cold. My mouth was wet, from hers. I said, in a whisper,'Do you feel it?”

“And for a moment I though I would tell her, that it would be the easiest and the slightest thing imaginable- that after all, if anyone would understand it, she would. That I need only say, 'I am in love, Helen! I am in love! There is a girl so rare and marvelous and strange, and- Helen, she has all my life in her!”

“Undressing myself had no fun in it, now I had undressed her.”

“In short, Nance, even was you going to the very devil himself, your mother and I would rather see you fly from us in joy, than stay with us in sorrow - and grow, maybe, to hate us, for keeping you from your fate.”

“She closed her eyes and let the rain fall on her face, and after another second, I could not have said what were raindrops, and what tears.”