They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.

I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on.

Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light.

Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.

A blaze of love and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. "Now they are all on their knees," An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearth-side ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! yet, I feel If someone said on Christmas Eve, "Come; see the oxen kneel, In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know," I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so.

To have lost is less disturbing than to wonder if we may possibly have won; and Eustacia could now, like other people at such a stage, take a standing-point outside herself, observe herself as a disinterested spectator, and think what a sport for Heaven this woman Eustacia was.