Style.
I suppose he hadn't. I think if I were one of them and had to choose, I
would rather have only a Style too."

* * *

When passion and habit long lie in company it is only slowly and with
incredulity that habit awakens to find its companion fled, itself alone.

* * *

A new acquaintance is like a new novel; you open it with expectation,
but what you find there seldom makes you care to take it off the shelf
another time.

* * *

The pity which is not born from experience is always cold. It cannot
help being so. It does not understand.

* * *

The house she lived in was very old, and had those charming conceits,
those rich shadows and depth of shade, that play of light, that variety,
and that character which seem given to a dwelling-place in ages when
men asked nothing better of their God than to live where their fathers
had lived, and leave the old roof-tree to their children's children.

The thing built yesterday, is a caravanserai: I lodge in it to-day, and
you to-morrow; in an old house only can be made a home, where the
blessings of the dead have rested and the memories of perfect faiths and
lofty passions still abide.

* * *

There is so much mystery in this world, only people who lead humdrum
lives will not believe it.

It is a great misfortune to be born to a romantic history. The humdrum
always think that you are lying. In real truth romance is common in
life, commoner, perhaps, than the commonplace. But the commonplace
always looks more natural.

In Nature there are millions of gorgeous hues to a scarcity of neutral
tints; yet the pictures that are painted in sombre semi-tones and have
no one positive colour in them are always pronounced the nearest to
nature. When a painter sets his palette, he dares not approach the gold
of the sunset and dawn, or the flame of the pomegranate and poppy.

* * *

This age of Money, of Concessions, of Capitalists, and of Limited
Liabilities, has largely produced the female financier, who thinks with
M. de Camors, that "_l'humanite est composee des actionnaires_." Other
centuries have had their especial type of womanhood; the learned and
graceful _hetaira_, the saintly and ascetic recluse, the warrior of
Oriflamme or Red Rose, the _dame de beaute_, all loveliness and light,
like a dewdrop, the philosophic _precieuse_, with sesquipedalian phra