by Henry James

“ Longmore answered, "I feel so angry, so merely sore and sick, that I wonder I don't leave you without more words."
"If you should go away in anger this idea of mine about our parting would be but half-realised," she returned with no drop in her ardour. "No, I don't want to think of you as feeling a great pain, I don't want even to think of you as making a great sacrifice. I want to think of you--"
"As a stupid brute who has never existed, who never CAN exist!" he broke in. "A creature who could know you without loving you, who could leave you without for ever missing you!" ”

“ Madame Clairin stood framed in the opening as if, though just arriving on the scene, she too were already aware of its interest. Conscious, apparently, that she might be suspected of having watched them she stepped forward with a smile and looked from one to the other. "Such a tete-a-tete as that one owes no apology for interrupting. One ought to come in for good manners."
Madame de Mauves turned to her, but answered nothing. She looked straight at Longmore, and her eyes shone with a lustre that struck him as divine. ”

“ With this sense of her tenderness still in her dreadful consistency, his spirit rose with a new flight and suddenly felt itself breathe clearer air. Her profession ceased to seem a mere bribe to his eagerness; it was charged with eagerness itself; it was a present reward and would somehow last. He moved rapidly toward her as with the sense of a gage that he might sublimely yet immediately enjoy.
They were separated by two thirds of the length of the terrace, and he had to pass the drawing-room window. ”