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400 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 28, 2014
...she knew she was seeing only half the picture and maybe not even that much. For the trumpets of the daffodils were lifted to the sky. The petals about them faced upward. If the flowers could see, as in a sense she supposed they could, then it was the sky, rather than the grass beneath them, upon which they gazed. She, on the other hand, was looking down upon the flowers and the grass.She turned her face upward to see that the sky was pure blue, with not a cloud in sight. But now, of course, she could no longer see the daffodils.
- Chapter 3
This morning she had been wearing a simple cotton dress and no bonnet. Her hair had been caught back in a plain knot at her neck. Her posture had been prim and self-contained, her expression placid. He had tried to tell himself that she was quite without sexual appeal, that he must be very bored indeed out here in the country if he was weaving fantasies about a plain, prim, virtuous widow.
Except that he was not bored. ...
...
And she was not plain. Or prim. And if she was virtuous -- and he did not doubt she was -- she was also full to the brim of repressed sexuality.
- Chapter 6
"You fear passion?" he asked her.
"Because it is uncontrolled," she cried. "Because it is selfish. Because it hurts -- other people if not oneself. I do not want passion. I do not want uncertainty. U do not want you yelling at me. Worse than that, I do not want me yelling back. I cannot stand it. I cannot stand this."
- Chapter 11