She had rarely been near Henry since then, and the sight of him now was like a concentrated dose.

It seemed to her as though everything that was good and true had been blasted out of the world. All those things had been crushed destroyed made to disappear.

That was how the heroine of a book would play it and Diana was still writing her own story the best heroines she'd always believed took their fate into their own hands.

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 considered herself unconventional.

She was like a heroine in a novel that she herself was writing the character kept protesting that she was too strong for love and yet the narrator went on describing her desire.

A man is made in the rough-and-tumble of the world a lady emerges from the flossy back rooms of her own imagination.