She seemed nearer to me dead than she had been when living.

Who could say what her future might have been?
She would have grown to womanhood--what then?
What is the usual fate that falls to even the best woman?
Sorrow, pain, and petty worry, unsatisfied longings, incompleted aims, the disappointment of an imperfect and fettered life--for say what you will to the contrary, woman's inferiority to man, her physical weakness, her inability to accomplish any great thing for the welfare of the world in which she lives, will always make her more or less an object of pity.

If good, she needs all the tenderness, support, and chivalrous guidance of her master, man--if bad, she merits what she receives, his pitiless disdain and measureless contempt.

From all dangers and griefs of the kind my Stella had escaped--for her, sorrow no longer existed.

I was glad of it, I thought, as I watched Assunta shutting the blinds close, as a signal to outsiders that death was in the house.