Thomas Hardy

“ Whose every breathing fanned my fire, And stole me from myself away!' Then, without letting him see her, Cytherea slipt out of church early, and went home, the tones of the organ still lingering in her ears as she tried bravely to kill a jealous thought that would nevertheless live: 'My nature is one capable of more, far more, intense feeling than hers! She can't appreciate all the sides of him--she never will! ”

“ The congregation sang the first Psalm and came to the verse--
'Like some fair tree which, fed by streams, With timely fruit doth bend, He still shall flourish, and success All his designs attend.' Cytherea's lips did not move, nor did any sound escape her; but could she help singing the words in the depths of her being, although the man to whom she applied them sat at her rival's side?
Perhaps the moral compensation for all a woman's petty cleverness under thriving conditions is the real nobility that lies in her extreme foolishness at these other times ”

“ He always contrived to obliterate by his manner all recollection on her side that she was comparatively more dependent than himself--making much of her womanhood, nothing of her situation. Prompt to aid her whenever occasion offered, and full of delightful petits soins at all times, he was not officious. In this way he irresistibly won for himself a position as her friend, and the more easily in that he allowed not the faintest symptom of the old love to be apparent. ”