She wanted to exist only as a conscious flower, prolonging and preserving herself - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure and the memory so possessed him that for the moment there was nothing to do but to pretend.

In the case of Beatrice’s money this was not so pronounced, but it was obvious that his father had devoted the previous year to several unfortunate gambles in oil. Very little of the oil had been burned, but Stephen Blaine had been rather badly singed.

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him