Instead, he sat in the parlor of his family's Fifth Avenue mansion, growing older by the minute just like everybody else.

It had been an awful thing to lose Henry the first time, to matrimony, but to discover what a false front he was capable of was another kind of blow, and it had left her almost speechless. Then there was the fury with herself—for she had known what Henry’s love was, and still she had gone back to suffer a little more at his hands.

It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer.

It is a truth universally acknowledge that there will always be a gentleman to dance with, except at just the moment when you require one most.

So this was betrayal. It was like being left alone in the desert at dusk without water or warmth. It left your mouth dry and will broken. It sapped your tears and made you hollow.

She found herself longing for home-not just for the hotel but for New York and all the real novels that she could lose herself in there.

Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.