And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but ...alive.

Sometimes children do not realize by how fragile a thread their security hangs. Perhaps it is as well they do not - most of them grow up before the thread can be broken.

I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.

All is artifice in my world, Constantine. Even me. Especially me. He taught me to be a duchess, to be an impregnable fortress, to be the guardian of my own heart, But he admitted that he could not teach me how or when to allow the fortress to be breached or my heart to be unlocked. It would simply happen, he said. he promised it would, in fact. But how is love to find me, even assuming it is looking?

Now I must live with the consequences of the choice I made. And I will not call it the wrong choice. That would be foolish and pointless. That choice led me to everything that has happened since, including this very moment, and the choices I make today or tomorrow or next week will lead me to the next and next present moments in my life. It is all a journey, Miss Jewell. I have come to understand that that is what life is all about-a journey and the courage and energy always to take the next step and the next without judgement about what was right and what was wrong.

Have you noticed," she asked him, "how we live much of our lives in the past and most of the rest of it in the future? Have you noticed how often the present moment slips by quiet unnoticed?

I wish," he said, "I had known at eighteen what I know now - that there are some things on which one does not compromise.