...there was always a sort of tacit understanding among women, born of the solidarity of the sex, that they should discover or invent lovers for each… - Henry James

I have in my own fashion learned the lesson that life is effort, unremittingly repeated.

"Oh," said Catherine, with some eagerness, "it doesn't take long to like a person — when once you begin."

This was the sound he cherished when alone in the stillness of his rooms. He sought and guarded the stillness, so that it might prevail there till the inevitable sounds of life, once more, comparatively coarse and harsh, should smother and deaden it — doubtless by the same process with which they would officiously heal the ache in his soul that was somehow one with it.