Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ But I am not ignorant in women's hearts. Hate may be the best of beginnings. The struggle may be a little longer;—I like struggles, let me tell you; the longer they last the sweeter is the surrender at the end.—And I have every reason to believe that to begin with hate is often to end with a more complete surrender.”
As André gave him this information Giles saw Alix emerge upon the verandah of Les Chardonnerets. ”

“ The look of one who has no illusions; who sees an order and accepts it; an order to live for and to make one's own. “And there will be the ideas and the atoms to watch, and the Bach choir to sing in,” she finished; “and walks in the country;—and then I shall be in France, for all the holidays, with Maman, Giles.”
She rose as she spoke, for the storm had passed. Sunlight was flooding in through the high pale windows of the clerestory. The Virgin's crown glittered against her pillar. Slowly, hand in hand, Alix and Giles walked down the nave. ”

“ Do not forget that the unconscious is crafty.”
Alix, opposite her mother, sat silent. Whether, in her mother's presence, she had lost her readiness Giles could not divine. But she made no reply.
“Alix has learned in England to be dispassionate,” said madame Vervier, her lovely russet head a little bent downward. “She has learned to combine love for another country with loyalty to her own. That is something England has given her.”
“Ah—but that's impossible;—impossible, for our French hearts, you know!” laughed André. “We are not dispassionate. ”

“ The yellow of Spring is so different.”
“One doesn't love any of the things of Summer as one does the things of Spring,” André remarked, strolling to the window to look out, and, clearly this morning, Giles divined what he had only surmised yesterday, that his temper was not attuned to brightness; that there might even lurk beneath its graceful surface a vindictive watchfulness. And when he had spoken he turned, leaning against the window, and looked at Alix, poised in her whiteness above the bowl of glowing flowers, looked at her as Giles had never before seen him look ”

“ She put her hand on his shoulder, as if with its pressure to help him to think clearly. “You are English and believe that more than anything it is right to marry the person you love.”
“But you are French, Alix. It's the other belief that's in your blood. The belief in what's suitable.”
“Ah, but it is true what Maman says to me, when she reproaches me; I have in some things become English. I think the thing most suitable of all is to love one's husband. To marry Jerry, loving you;—no, Giles; you know that that would not be possible to me. And I do not love him at all. He is not near me at all ”

“ She looked at her flowers, drawing a leaf forward here and there around the edge of the bowl, and he saw that she was troubled. But she said: “We will go to the church, at all events. Yes. I should like a walk very much.” ”