“No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.”

“In this winter night, long and ample for bitter memories, many a widow who lost her husband in the war and is now left alone will press her palms to her ageing face; and in the nocturnal darkness the burning tears, as bitter as wormwood, will scorch her fingers.”

“In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face — the face of one long dead —
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.”

“There's nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world.”

“I watched her departure, as one watches a sunset. She went like a radiance through the dark wood, which was henceforth bright to me, from simply knowing that such a creature was in it.”

“She walked quickly through the darkness with the frank stride of someone who was at least certain that the forest, on this damp and windy night, contained strange and terrible things and she was it.”

“And she arose, and in that darkening room
Stood lonely as a spirit of the night —
Stood calm and fearless in the gathered night —
And raised her eyes to heaven. There were tears
Upon her face, but in her heart was peace.
Peace that the world nor gives nor takes away!”

“She laced her fingers through his. "Good night," she whispered. With their hands clasped like children in a fairy tale, she fell asleep beside him in the dark.”

“Oh, when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then for pains and fears,
The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrow, all her tears,
An over-payment of delight?”

“I watched the tears run down her cheeks and start to drip from the end of her chin. One part of me wanted to put my arms round her but I daren't. Do that and I'd never be able to let her go.”