“I went over and over everything that had ever happened between us. I couldn’t keep doing it, going back and fourth, holding her close and then pushing her away. It wasn’t right”

“I knew I had to keep him to myself, as I'd slowly begun to keep everything. We had secrets now, truths and half-truths, that kept her always at arm's length, behind a closed door, miles away.”

“The receptionist looked us over, then went back to typing something incredibly urgent—like her résumé́ for another job.”

“She just happened to feel like it. Wasn’t that after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?”

“I forgot, over and over, that the fact of my wanting something wasn’t enough to make it happen.”

“That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch.”

“Keeping vigil over her are two monsters of very different breeds but monster just the same.
Death on her left.
Devil on her right.”

“When she was home from her boarding-school I used to see her almost every day sometimes, because their house was right opposite the Town Hall Annexe. She and her younger sister used to go in and out a lot, often with young men, which of course I didn’t like. When I had a free moment from the files and ledgers I stood by the window and used to look down over the road over the frosting and sometimes I’d see her. In the evening I marked it in my observations diary, at first with X, and then when I knew her name with M.”

““I can’t keep giving my will into other people hands no more, ain’t? I have to decide what I want to do for myself.” No answer. It wasn’t going to tell her.”

“Miss," she gasped, and then her eyes went toWill. She clapped a hand over her mouth, turned, and bolted back into the house.
"Oh, dear," said Tessa.
"I have that effect on women," Will said.”