“He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.”

“She did not send for him until she was afraid; she was not afraid until he undid her work; he did not undo her work until he was past loving her.”

“She didn't know how much she'd been hoping that he still loved her, until she felt how much it hurt to realize he didn't.”

“Like a good and happy man increasing his virtue, he kissed her. She did not move away from him. She remained in the embrace of his right arm, her face nuzzling his shoulder, her eyes closed. He tipped her chin to look and measure opportunity. She could not open her eyes. Honorably he searched, but on her face he met no quarrel.”

“He felt there in the teachers' room that it was the beginning of a new season in his life, and he chose deliberately to make it so. He did not have to make any announcement to Leslie that he had changed his mind about her. She already knew it.”

“She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he understood her better, when she was the product of her parents. What she was now was what she herself had decided to become.”

“She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.”

“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.”

“Man, life was complicated. But the truth was simple. He was her home. He was where she belonged.”

“Fate slew him, but he did not drop;
She felled—he did not fall—
Impaled him on her fiercest stakes—
He neutralized them all.

She stung him, sapped his firm advance,
But, when her worst was done,
And he, unmoved, regarded her,
Acknowledged him a man.”