As I kissed her the heat of her body increased, and it exhaled a wild, untamed fragrance.

Florentina Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-three years, seven months and eleven days and nights. 'Forever,' he said.

One never quite stops believing, some doubt remains forever".

She searched the truth with an anguish almost as great as her terrible fear of finding it .

Everything that belonged to her husband made her weep again: his tasseled slippers, his pajamas under the pillow, the space of his absence in the dressing table mirror, his own odor on her skin. A vague thought made her shudder: "The people one loves should take all their things with them when they die.

She knew that it would not be easy to submit to his miserliness, or the foolishness of his premature appearance of age, or his maniacal sense of order, or his eagerness to as for everything and give nothing at all in return, but despite all this, no man was better company because no other man in the world was so in need of love.

The truth was that I could not manage my soul, and I was becoming aware of old age because of my weakness in the face of love.