She wanted—what some people want throughout life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy.

But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.

No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

It is very singular how the fact of a man's death often seems to give people a truer idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than they have ever possessed while he was living and acting among them.

Masculine observers, if the birth-mark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness, without the semblance of a flaw.

When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtle process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod-or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly-thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude.

And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me.