nd she female,
the everlasting fountain of interest.

*****

The effervescency of her passionate and irritable nature rose within
her at times to bursting point. This is the price paid by age for
unseasonable ardours of feeling.

*****

Weir must have supposed his bride to be somewhat suitable; perhaps he
belonged to that class of men who think a weak head the ornament of
women--an opinion invariably punished in this life.

*****

Never ask women folk. They're bound to answer 'No.' God never made the
lass that could resist the temptation.

*****

It is an odd thing how happily two people, if there are two, can live
in a place where they have no acquaintance. I think the spectacle of a
whole life in which you have no part paralyses personal desire. You are
content to become a mere spectator. The baker stands in his door; the
colonel with his three medals goes by to the CAFE at night; the troops
drum and trumpet and man the ramparts as bold as so many lions. It would
task language to say how placidly you behold all this. In a place where
you have taken some root you are provoked out of your indifference; you
have a hand in the game--your friends are fighting with the army. But in
a strange town, not small enough to grow too soon familiar, nor so large
as to have laid itself out for travellers, you stand so far apart from
the business that you positively forget it would be possible to go
nearer; you have so little human interest around you that you do not
remember yourself to be a man.

*****

Pity was her weapon and her weakness. To accept the loved one's faults,
although it has an air of freedom, is to kiss the chain.

*****

Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed,
variable men by its very awfulness. They have been so tried among the
inconstant squalls and currents, so often sailed for islands in the air
or lain becalmed with burning heart, that they will risk all for solid
ground below their feet. Desperate pilots, they run their sea-sick,
weary bark upon the dashing rocks. It seems as if marriage were the
royal road through life, and realised, on the instant, what we have
all dreamed on summer Sundays when the bells ring, or at night when
we cannot sleep for the desire of living. They think it will sober and
change them. Like those who join a brotherhood, they fancy it needs but
an act to be out of the coil and clamour for ever. But this is a wile
of the devil's. To the