If only things were not as they are, she reflected, they would certainly be different. - David D. Levine

My dear Mrs. Singh," Lady Corey sighed, interrupting. "The first thing you must learn about prevarication is to reduce detail to an absolute minimum.

How absurd, she thought, that the sight of a man’s naked breast should be more objectionable than to see him possibly blown to bits.

His eyes, as she had noted before, betrayed a keen intelligence but no emotion whatsoever—they might have been the eyes of some ancient tortoise, one who had seen a thousand empires rise and fall and cared nothing for any of them.