I am not sure what lonliness is," she said. "If it is not literally being solitary, is it the fear of solitude, of being alone with oneself? I feel no such fear. I like being alone." "What do you fear then?" he asked her. She glanced briefly at him and smiled, a fragile expression that spoke for itself even before she found words. "Never finding myself again.

There had to be a reason why they were not going to marry. They had both been so adamant about it. What the devil was the reason?

Tears never were worth the effort of crying them.

A sunrise or sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.

I am free, you see," she said, "to love or to withhold love. Love and dependence need no longer be the same thing to me. I am free to love. that is why I love you and it is the way I love you. If you have come here, Kit, because you think you owe me something, because you believe I might crumble without your protection, then go away again with my blessing and find happiness with someone else." "I love you," he said again.

Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own souls, where no one else is allowed to intrude.

But only a person in the depths of despair neglected to look beyond winter to the spring that inevitably followed, bringing back color and life and hope.