And even love seems to leave people wanting everything else just as badly.

Your mother has had a perfect love--she told me so--and yet it hasn't kept her from wanting all the other things in life, has it?
I wish I could work it out," she finished, a little sadly, for she was thinking of her mother's cry on the night of Jane's attack: "I am tempted to hope Gabriella will never marry.

The Carrs all marry so badly!" Why had those words come back to her to-night?
She had not remembered them for months, she had even forgotten that she had heard them, and now they floated to her as clearly as if they had been spoken aloud.
In a little while Billy came in, and when, after a few moments of spasmodic affability, Mrs.Crowborough rose and pleaded an early board meeting on the morrow, Gabriella watched Patty wrap her honey-coloured head in a white scarf and then stand, waiting for a cab, in the doorway.
Happiness, with so many people an invisible attribute, encircled Patty like a garment of light.

It crowned her white brow under the glory of her hair; it shone in her eyes; it rippled in her smile; it lingered in a beam of sunshine on her lips.

With her arm in Billy's she looked back laughing from the steps, and it seemed to Gabriella that all the brightness of life was going with them into the darkness.