Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event. - George Gissing

His grey eyes searched her countenance with that horrible intensity of fanaticism which is so like the look of cruelty, of greed, of any passion originating in the baser self.

In this humor [bantering/flirtatious] she [Rhoda Nunn] seemed more than ever a challenge to his manhood. She was armed at all points. She feared nothing that he might say. No flush of apprehension; no nervous tremor; no weak self-consciousness. Yet he saw her as a woman, and desirable.

Walker's a fool and Quarmby's an ass,' remarked her father.