I do love the past but wouldn't want to live in it.

I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall in a few Victorian parlours.

What did she want? Frances couldn’t tell. She wasn’t sure she cared any more. There had been too much dancing back and forth. The night had been over-stretched: it had lost its tension.

Kitty’s gone, Flo. Like Lilian. Believe me, there’s more chance of her coming back!’ I began to smile. ‘And if she does, you can go to her, and I won’t say a word. And if Kitty comes for me, you can do similar. And then, I suppose, we shall have our paradises – and will be able to wave to one another from our separate clouds. But till then – till then, Flo, can’t we go on kissing, and just be glad?

He was just the sort of man to have faith in leeches. Leeches, and licorice, and cod-liver oil.

I’m sorry you aren’t as brave as you thought you were. But don’t punish me because of it.

There had been romances in my schooldays – but all my friends had had those; we were forever sending each other Valentines, writing sonnets on the prefect’s eyes... This wasn’t like that. It was a thing of the heart and the head and the body. A real, true thing, grown-up.

The best thing to do was to brazen it out, throw your head back, walk with a swagger, make a ‘character’ of yourself. It was tiring, sometimes, when you hadn’t the energy for it; that’s all.

He would be cruel indeed, to put a passion in her, and then to punish her for feeling it.

Was this, she thought, what happened when one made friends with a married woman? One automatically got the husband too? – like a crochet pattern, coming free with a magazine?