She had nothing to go upon, for she had never been young; or rather she had treated her youth unkindly, she had fed it on saw-dust and given it nothing but arithmetic books to play with, so that its experiences were of no earthly use to her.
And now, if they had only let her alone, she might have been none the wiser; her folly might have put on many quaint disguises, friendship, literary sympathy, intellectual esteem--there were a thousand delicate subterfuges and innocent hypocrisies, and under any one of them it might have crept about unchallenged in the shadows and blind alleys of thought.
As love pure and simple, if it came to that, there was no harm in it.
Many an old maid, older than she, has just such a secret folded up and put away all sweet and pure; the poor lady does not call it love, but remembrance, which is so to speak love laid in lavender; and she--who knows?
She might have contrived a little shrine for it somewhere; she had always understood that love was a holy thing.
Unfortunately, when a holy thing has been pulled about and dragged in the mud, it may be as holy as ever but it will never look the same.

In Miss Quincey's case mortal passion had been shaken out of its sleep and forced to look at itself before it had time to put on a shred of immortality.

In the sudden glare it stood out monstrous, naked and ashamed; she herself had helped to deprive it of all the delicacies and amenities that made it tolerable to thought.

With her own hands she had delivered it up to the stethoscope.
He knew, he knew.

In the mad rush of her ideas one sentence detached itself from the torrent.