Henry James

“ What it comes to is that it's not, that it's never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to take. The only safe thing is to give. It's what plays you least false." Interesting, touching, strikingly sincere as she let these things come from her, she yet puzzled and troubled him—so fine was the quaver of her quietness. ”

“ She again made nothing of it; she went on with her insistence. "That won't help you. There's nothing to help you."
"Well, it may help you," he said.
She shook her head. "There's not a grain of certainty in my future; for the only certainty is that I shall be the loser in the end." ”

“ I don't ask you to raise your little finger for me again, nor do I wish so much as to mention to you what we've talked of before, either my danger or my safety, or his mother or his sister, or the girl he may marry, or the fortune he may make or miss, or the right or the wrong, of any kind, he may do. If after the help one has had from you one can't either take care of one's self or simply hold one's tongue, one must renounce all claim to be an object of interest. ”

“ You'd do everything for us but be mixed up with us—which is a statement you can easily answer to the advantage of your own manners. You can say 'What's the use of talking of things that at the best are impossible?' What is, of course, the use? It's only my little madness. You'd talk if you were tormented. And I don't mean now about him. Oh, for him———!" Positively, strangely, bitterly, as it seemed to Strether, she gave "him," for the moment, away. "You don't care what I think of you ”

“ The only thing was that she judged herself as the maidservant wouldn't; the weakness of which wisdom too, the dishonour of which judgment, seemed but to sink her lower. Her collapse, however, no doubt, was briefer, and she had in a manner recovered herself before he intervened. "Of course I'm afraid for my life. ”

“ It might have made Strether hot or shy, as such secrets of others, brought home, sometimes do make us; but he was held there by something so hard that it was fairly grim. This was not the discomposure of last night; that had quite passed—such discomposures were a detail; the real coercion was to see a man ineffably adored. There it was again—it took women, it took women ”