“ He opened the french-windows, and the air that blew from the sea and the red fields of Devon swept into the room in a cloud of jasmine scent, and through the diamond panes I saw the stars twinkling—and suddenly I lost Pam Burbridge and the pretty room. I became something that had kinship with the stars and the hot scent of jasmine, something that was houseless and homeless and free; I walked beside Cheneston through Elysian fields, I talked to him and had no need of words. We were mates, we who had never been lovers. ”

“ I feel that the Pamela Burbridge of those days is dead, poor thing! but she has a more exciting time than most defunct people, because every night I shake her up and make her live over again her enchanted halcyon days by the sea and at Cromer Court.
She lives in sunshine and happiness for an hour or two of memory every night, even if she has to die off while I go and do my day's work.
Life is really awfully funny and un-understandable. Why are we given feelings we've got to squash?
Are we big if we squash them and little if we let them grow?
I wouldn't squash my feelings about Cheneston. ”

“ I heard Grace say in that queer, lilting voice of hers:
"Oh, bother! Cheneston, you're just too late! That was Pam Burbridge—only she isn't any more, she's married, and her husband is outside in a car."
And as I hurried out into the courtyard a woman getting out of a car said:
"Look at that woman; isn't she wonderful!"
Of course it was Grace; if it had been me she would have said:
"Look at that funny little moth-eaten rabbit of a girl hurrying away as if there was a stoat after her. You really do see the queerest people everywhere nowadays." ”

“ I wished for the hundredth time that I might be big and Cheneston little—ever so little—that I might take him in my arms roughly and tell him not to look like that. I felt I could go to Walter Markham and explain everything, I could sit by his bedside and skin my very soul—but I couldn't help feeling, even then, it would be easier to do something bigger and less painful, something more actually physical than soul-skinning.
I never found it very easy to show my feelings to people; the bigger they are the more tightly corked they seem. ”

“ I am writing this in my bedroom at Cromer Court, at a Queen Anne desk, and by-and-by I am going to climb in a Queen Anne bed to watch the firelight flicker on the white panelled walls, on the quaintest chintz I have ever seen covering the chairs and the great divan, and fluttering like restless wings over open windows—pale green linen, the colour of young leaves, with bunches of white-heart cherries scattered over it.
I feel simple as a milkmaid and good as a nun in this dear old house, and I have never felt so happy. It is a precarious happiness. ”

“ When I am with people I feel as if I am a fairy princess taking part in a fairy play, a wonderful and desirable and adorable person. It is a perfectly marvellous feeling; and when I am alone with Cheneston I feel as if he switched the limelight off with an impatient hand, and I was just a plain, shabby, silly kid.
He has bought me an engagement ring—for the six weeks before he goes to the front.
"Let us be as beastly orthodox as possible," he said as he popped it on. "Why don't you look after your nails—you've got decent hands." ”

“ You feel as if you were continually being fêted. All the women in the set in which I live now are treated the same way. I cannot understand why they ever grow old or have to have their wrinkles massaged and their hair hennaed; none of the sort of things that make a woman grow old are allowed to come near them.
All the things, and the sights, and the feelings that are stale to Grace Gilpin and her chic friends are new to me—I sort of rush at them and mop them up. I can't help being thrilled and happy. ”

“ If you care for a man you care for him, and that's all there is to it; the fact that he cares for someone else or doesn't care for you doesn't alter your feelings, it only makes the pain and hurt of it an artistic success.
I wish I was jelly-fishy in my feelings for people. If I were I could say of Cheneston, "I can't stick here! I'll float on." But I'm a barnacle creature where I love. I shall be Cheneston's girl even if I never see him again. ”

“ I used to wonder, in the days when love and marriage seemed very beautiful and interesting and tremendous food for speculation, but utterly removed from reality and me, what the woman felt like when the question of money first cropped up, whether it spoilt the idealism and romance a little, upset the atmosphere like a Ransome lawn-mower introduced into the Garden of Eden. ”

“ I quite understood why Captain Cromer was bitter, why he wanted a fiancée.
He wanted to hit back.
A sort of buzz of talk and teasing broke out all round me, and through it all I detected a vein of surprise.
Grace Gilpin came down the veranda to shake hands. She walked wonderfully—just like an actress on the stage.
"Why, you poor souls!" she said, lightly and gaily, "so it's raining"—and she looked at my old mack; then everybody looked at it.
I felt suddenly as if I wanted to cry.
"I made her put it on," I heard Captain Cromer say. "She is such a foolish little person. ”

“ And the next I wanted to fight Grace Gilpin for Cheneston and start that very minute; me, the funny little thing with the snub nose who made people laugh!
Why did Heaven make me a funny little thing with a snub nose? It wasn't sporting; and I do think it handicaps one. One doesn't somehow expect a snub nose to be a Joan of Arc, or Florence Nightingale, or Mrs. Pankhurst, or anything thrilling and earnest and vital and glowing.
I think it's rotten to be born a quaint little thing that nobody takes seriously. ”

“ I suppose there is something of the joy of forbidden fruit in it—but it is wonderful and gorgeous to have Cheneston look at me like a lover, even though I know it is only to satisfy his mother.
I think it is awful the way we women can kid ourselves about love, drench ourselves in a sweetness that isn't really there, get intoxicated with a joy that exists only in our own imaginations. ”

“ I wondered, as the months slipped by, if Cheneston had married Grace Gilpin.
I did not lose Cheneston. I could always step right back in memory into the days I had spent with him, days of infinite and dear delight.
I knew I loved Cheneston, that I wanted passionately to be his wife; that if he were to ask me to marry him I would marry him rapturously and thankfully, even though I knew he didn't care two straws about me and would need a photograph to remember the way I did my hair.
I believe the "if she be not fair for me, what care I how fair she be" sort of people are very, very jelly-fishy. ”

“ It is easy to do dramatic things, to make your exit; but to slip away when you want to stay, when your whole heart is aching to stay, to make exits so silently and unostentatiously that the ones you long to miss you hardly know that you are gone—that is the hardest of all.
I knew before I left Mrs. Cromer's side that I was going to run away—away from Cheneston and Walter Markham and mother and father. ”

“ I believe that somewhere there are little corners for lovers who are not loved, and there neither moonshine, nor sunshine, nor star shine shall worry them, neither the scent of flowers nor the dear, shrill, heart-plucking songs of birds ”

“ But I knew that no one would stand and stare if I stood where Grace Gilpin had stood a moment before; they would only say: "There's a girl bathing—but she'll find it pretty fresh."
Cheneston was speaking.
"Life isn't fair. One does a thing in pique or temper, or because one's pride is hurt; one thinks the effects will only last a minute, and they last for months and years—they are far-reaching, they involve other people, till sometimes it seems one cannot light a match or perform the most trivial office without involving other destinies and lives. ”

“ The atmosphere of the house is almost as if a raid were just over when he is gone.
The Gilpins had announced their intention of seeing the battery off, and they were calling for us in their motor.
I dread that little station at six o'clock in the morning, and all the men, and the crowd of women beyond the barrier, and the mess band shouting "The Long, Long Trail," and the chilly greyness; it sort of nibbles your heart before ever the good-byes are started.
Cheneston has been up to say good-bye to the Gilpins. ”

“ He doesn't love me, I know; but I have a conviction you can't grow unless you love, and I feel so much more use in the world since I've started growing.
Loving Cheneston has made life perfectly wonderful for me. He doesn't know it and he never will, but he's shown me all the dear beauty of the world—and it is beautiful.
Walter Markham is awfully nice to me; sometimes he leaves Grace Gilpin to Cheneston and walks with me, and he is teaching me tennis in the mornings before breakfast. He is much older than Cheneston, Grace, or I—he must be forty—and he is very rich. ”

“ I shall not hesitate to go to Cheneston and tell him you are frantically and desperately in love with him, and what may have been jest to him is grim reality to you, and unless he marries you he'll ruin your happiness. I shall be able to say it sincerely because I know it to be true. You are going to tell Cheneston that Walter Markham quite understands why you are staying at Cromer Court, that you have unlocked your lovers' hearts to each other. ”

“ I had a sudden vision of Grace writing, her golden head bent, seeing in the missive and Walter Markham's presence in England the chance of freedom for herself and Cheneston; believing Cheneston loved her and I loved Walter Markham; believing that our engagement was just an emotional mistake, never guessing it wasn't an engagement at all!
A great many engagements are emotional mistakes. Why not ours? ”

“ There are moments in everyone's life when you feel as if you're taking part in an unreal play; there comes a sudden feeling of panic, as if you did not know your part. I got it that night when I was dressing—and yet there was a dreadful thrilling, electric sweetness about it all. ”

“ I just want to pass on every bit of loveliness that comes into my life. We passed lots of children picking blackberries, and I could have cried because I wanted to kiss them so, or give them something, or just tell them I thought they'd get the loveliest lot of blackberries I had ever seen—because I was up in the world, sitting above the hedges with Cheneston. ”

“ The idea of Cheneston being clumsy, Cheneston with his fine, fierce, almost uncanny insight into things, had me by the throat.
"I see," Cheneston said slowly. "Little Pam, I hate to think I have made you afraid for your happiness even for one minute. You are so worthy of happiness—so absolutely great! He'll understand, dear, how simply priceless you've been to—come here. He's bound to understand." He looked down at me with fierce anxiety in his hazel eyes, he seemed desperately questioning his own belief in Walter Markham's broad-mindedness. ”

“ The moors, and the stars, and the leaves of the aspens shivering in the moonlight like spangles on a dancer's dress, and the scent of the heather, and of gorse, and the tingling, exhilarating pungency of the unseen sea—could anything hurt more?
And me, longing to belong to the night—to capture just a scrap of its mystic, thrilling beauty—walking beside the one man in the world an unromantic, bunchy little thing with a snub nose. ”

“ The gallant boy in you will be his pal, the elf will keep him your eternal lover, and the mother—will keep him on his knees to you." She looked up at me whimsically, tenderly. "The Cromers are a woman's life-work—they run away for years and leave you to break your heart, and they come back and fill the hall with tusks and elephant-leg umbrella-stands, and expect you to go mad with them over the trophies. The elf in you will still the call of the wild in Cheneston, he will not dare to leave you, and the mother that broods in your quiet eyes." ”

“ I hate dad when he gets red and shouts—I simply have to beat a retreat. I can quite understand why the men are in such a fearful funk of him. I have been terrified and appalled by him all my life, such is his effect on my temperament that I could do or say anything when he loses control and goes for me, tell any childish lies or make any excuses. ”

“ Cheneston said. "I shall tell mater you've got to go up to Town on business."
"I'll tell her," I answered hastily.
I knew she would sense Cheneston's disquiet; women lie to women better than men to women. She took my departure more quietly than I had anticipated. There was a lovely expression on her dear face—it was as if her soul was smiling to itself while she was grave. She patted me with her lovely soft hands.
"And you will be back early to-morrow, dear, funny little girl? It's odd," she said, "I see a cloud between you and Cheneston. ”

“ Grace Gilpin says.
Yet the men seem to like my enthusiasm. I couldn't be blasé if I tried.
I love, love, love every bit of every single day—that's the honest truth.
I don't think it's rained once since the night Cheneston and I met in the glare of the searchlights. I suppose that seems a frightfully little thing, but it isn't—it's an awfully big thing.
And the battery is nearly due to leave for France.
Cheneston is so sweet and gentle with me, just like an elder brother to his little sister.
I never knew a man could understand in the way he does. ”

“ I never see love as something that is remote and cold and miles away. I would go to the ends of the earth with Cheneston, and I would love to nurse him when he's got a cold. I would love to go to his house in Norway, but I would also adore to make toast in front of the kitchen fire with him if the maid was out. ”