Night and Day

FROM THE PAGES OF NIGHT AND DAY

It was a Sunday evening in October, and in common with many other young ladies of her class, Katharine Hilbery was pouring out tea. Perhaps a fifth part of her mind was thus occupied, and the remaining parts leapt over the little barrier of day which interposed between Monday morning and this rather subdued moment, and played with the things one does voluntarily and normally in the daylight.

(page 5)

The temper of the meeting was now unfavourable to separate conversation; it had become rather debauched and hilarious, and people who scarcely knew each other were making use of Christian names with apparent cordiality, and had reached that kind of gay tolerance and general friendliness which human beings in England only attain after sitting together for three hours or so, and the first cold blast in the air of the streets freezes them into isolation once more.

(page 53)

He summoned all the faculties of his spirit to seize what the minutes had to give him; and from the depths of his mind there rose unchecked a joyful recognition of the truth that human nature surpasses, in its beauty, all that our wildest dreams bring us hints of.

(page 128)

‘Oh, there are other things in the world besides the Suffrage.’

(page 164)

After gazing for another second, the stars did their usual work upon the mind, froze to cinders the whole of our short human history, and reduced the human body to an ape-like, furry form, crouching amid the brushwood of a barbarous clod of mud. (page 172)

‘Well, I really don’t advise a woman who wants to have things her own way to get married.’ (page 185)

He felt himself thrown back to the beginning of life again, where everything has yet to be won; but in extreme youth one has an ignorant hope. He was no longer certain that he would triumph.

(page 221)

Such symptoms of agitation as he might perceive (and they had left their tokens in brightness of eye and pallor of cheeks) seemed to him well befitting the actors in so great a drama as that of Katharine Hilbery’s daily life. (page 254)

Like a strain of music, the effect of Katharine’s presence slowly died from the room in which Ralph sat alone. The music had ceased in the rapture of its melody. He strained to catch the faintest echoes; for a moment the memory lulled him into peace; but soon it failed, and he paced the room so hungry for the sound to come again that he was conscious of no other desire left in life. (page 334)

‘You’ve asked her for sympathy, and she’s not sympathetic; you’ve wanted her to be practical, and she’s not practical. You’ve been selfish; you’ve been exacting—and so has Katharine—but it wasn’t anybody’s fault.’ (page 361)

‘I’ve seen more trouble come from long engagements than from any other form of human folly.’ (page 408)

‘I assure you that we are in love—what other people call love.

Remember that night. We had no doubts whatever then. We were absolutely happy for half an hour. You had no lapse until the day after; I had no lapse until yesterday morning. We’ve been happy at intervals all day until I—went off my head, and you, quite naturally, were bored.’ (pages 411-412)

She might speak to him, but with that strange tremor in his voice, those eyes blindly adoring, whom did he answer? What woman did he see? (page 441)