Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ Alix was aware that a great deal had happened to herself since she had last seen Giles, only two months ago. It was not only her lengthened skirts and her turned-in locks that gave her her new sense of maturity. Perhaps one only began really to be grown up when one began to know why one was unhappy. A child suffers in ignorance of the cause of its suffering and it can forget more easily because of that merciful vagueness. Unhappiness is only a cloud to put away or pass out of. But grown-up unhappiness was four solid walls of fact enclosing one. ”

“ Alix, all unversed in these large subjects as she was, felt herself impelled to make the answer so obvious to every French mind. “I do not think we care about their hearts. When a bad man is guillotined, it is sufficient that his head should be gone. His heart does not concern us.”
Giles at this laughed loudly and Aunt Bella's eye-glassed gaze turned to glitter reprobation at him. “She doesn't know what she's saying, Giles. She is too young to have followed or understood the lamentable policy of her country. You really shouldn't encourage her.” ”

“ How much more capable Aunt Bella was, Alix reflected, of sympathizing with large vague masses of humanity than with one human being.
“Not educated at all from the modern point of view,” she returned decisively. “Quite incapable of making her own living. A very dear, good girl, but a useless girl, and there is no room in the world nowadays for useless people.” “There's room for Toppie,” said Giles coldly; and then, perhaps, Aunt Bella remembered that he had a special feeling about Toppie, for she desisted. ”