Henry shook his head, 'I was drunk,' he said, trying to sound both ashamed and firm in this belief. He remembered the rosebush incident very clearly, of course, but he knew that sneaking into the bedroom window of his fiancee's little sister wasn't something he wanted to explain to his father. Sometimes, Henry reflected, being taken for a perpetual drunk was sort of convenient.

You don’t need to marry a man with millions. You only need to be your exquisite self.

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.

It is well known that a man, when wooing a lady to be his wife, must first win over the females she most confides in—her friends, of course, and her sister, if she has one.

She felt so much aware of her own beauty it seemed inconceivable that everybody else wouldn't notice the difference too.

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.

Girls took to dressing like boys, and though women had obtained the vote, we had swiftly moved on to pursuing flashier freedoms: necking in cars and smoking cigarettes and walking down city streets in flesh colored stockings.