“Even now it’s not a question of anything I should ask you in a way to ‘do.’ It’s simply a question of your not turning me away—taking yourself out of my life. It’s simply a question of your saying: ‘Yes then, since you will, we’ll stand together. We won’t worry in advance about how or where; we’ll have a faith and find a way.’ That’s all-that would be the good you’d do me. I should have you, and it would be for my benefit.” (page 36)

“She fixed upon me herself, settled on me with her wonderful gilded claws.” (page 71)

The lady in question, at all events, with her slightly Michael-angelesque squareness, her eyes of other days, her full lips, her long neck, her recorded jewels, her brocaded and wasted reds, was a very great personage—only unaccompanied by a joy. And she was dead, dead, dead. Milly recognised her exactly in words that had nothing to do with her. “I shall never be better than this.” (page 169)

“As I told you before, I’m American. Not that I mean that makes me worse. However, you’ll probably know what it makes me.”

(page 183)

“That’s the way people are. What they think of their enemies, goodness knows, is bad enough; but I’m still more struck with what they think of their friends.” (page 265)

“I lie well, thank God.” (page 302)

“Since she’s to die I’m to marry her?” (page 375)

Venice glowed and plashed and called and chimed again; the air was like a clap of hands, and the scattered pinks, yellows, blues, sea-greens, were like a hanging-out of vivid stuffs, a laying-down of fine carpets. (page 420)

“She won’t have loved you for nothing.” (page 445)

“I used to call her, in my stupidity—for want of anything better—a dove. Well she stretched out her wings, and it was to that they reached. They cover us.” (page 491)