“At first, she could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him?”

“She loved him absolutely, perhaps for half an hour.”

“but she realized that she wanted him to know her. She wanted him to understand her, if only because she had strange sense that he was the kind of man she could fall in love with, even if she didn't want to.”

“He never had really been able to understand what it was that she wanted him for…although he felt certain that she wanted him for something real, that he filled some need for her, as she did for him, which could for lack of a more specific term be called love.”

“And it was at moments like this that she had to remind herself that she was in love with him, or had once been in love with him, a long time ago.”

“She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did now know him at all?”

“Now she had to pretend not to love the man she was pretending to love while pretending she wasn't sleeping with him.”

“My love for you is a prayer, she thought. Love is the only prayer I know. She thought she had never loved him so much as at this moment, when she heard the convent door close, hard and final, and felt the wall shutting her in.”

“She had tried to love him.”

“Now she had a fumbling knowledge that, had she ever understood Ashley, she would never have loved him; had she ever understood Rhett, she would never have lost him.”