One doesn't generally look into mirrors when one is especially angry; one has better things to do, like pace the floor or throw things.

...there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week.

He laughed, tried to make it into a cough, inhaled at exactly the wrong moment, and then really did cough.

Can you trust me, he said. Not will you. Can you. Can I trust him? What do I have to lose?

It doesn't matter if I'm only to be gone four days, as in this case; I take six months' supply of reading material everywhere. Anyone who needs further explication of this eccentricity can find it usefully set out in the first pages of W. Somerset Maugham's story "The Book-Bag.

All you did was sit there, he said. Why are you so tired? I sat very diligently, she said.

I don't believe in fate," she said at last. "But I do believe in...loopholes. I think a lot of what keeps the world going is the result of accidents — happy or otherwise — and taking advantage of these.