When I am wicked I am in high spirits. - Henry James

Not to give away the woman one loved, but to back her up in her mistakes — once they had gone a certain length — that was perhaps chief among the inevitabilities of the abjection of love.

I still, in presence of life... have reactions — as many as possible... It's, I suppose, because I am that queer monster, the artist, an obstinate finality, an inexhaustible sensibility. Hence the reactions — appearances, memories, many things, go on playing upon it with consequences that I note and "enjoy" (grim word!) noting. It all takes doing — and I do. I believe I shall do yet again — it is still an act of life.

We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped.