There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down.

I can not help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.

Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die--die, sweetly die--into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.

Perhaps, she says (Madame de la Rougierre), Other souls than human are sometimes born into the world & clothed in human flesh.

but curiosity is a restless and scrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that hers should be baffled by another.

Knowledge is power-and power of one sort or another is the secret lust of human souls; and here is, beside the sense of exploration, the undefinable interest of a story, and above all, something forbidden, to stimulate the contumacious appetite.

Women are so enigmatical - some in everything - all in matters of the heart. Don't they sometimes actually admire what is repulsive?