J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The precautions of nervous people re infectious, and persons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them.

But curiosity is a restless and unscrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that hers should be baffled by another.

Mademoiselle De Lafontaine _ in right of her father, who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical and something of a mystic _ now declared that when the moon shone with a light so intense it was well known that it indicated a special spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people; it had marvelous physical influences connected with life. Mademoiselle related that here cousin, who was mate of a merchant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side; and his countenance had never quite recovered its equilibrium.

But to die as lovers may - to die together, so that they may live together.

No one likes a straight road but the man who pays for it, or who, when he travels, is brute enough to wish to get to his journey's end.

Jusging by the sour glance she threw on me as she said this, I concluded that I represented those 'late changes' to which all the sorrows of the house were referred. I felt unhappy under the ill-will even of this odious old woman, being one of those unhappily constructed mortals who cannot be indifferent when they reasonably ought, and always yearn after kindness, even that of the worthless.

I remember everything about it__ith an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent.

For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.

Although I felt very weak, I did not feel ill; and strength, one always fancies, is a thing that may be picked up when we please.

If your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours.

How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long__he care of cares__he only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven__nd straight you find a new stratum there. As physical science tells us no fluid is without its skin, so does it seem with this fine medium of the soul, and these successive films of care that form upon its surface on mere contact with the upper air and light.

You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me.

(...) and I tell you, Austin Ruthyn, if you won't look about and marry somebody, somebody may possibly marry you.

Have not women preferred hatred to indifference, and the reputation of witchcraft, with all its penalties, to absolute insignificance?

I am afraid we women are factionists; we always take a side, and nature has formed us for advocates rather than judges.

You will do well to take advantage of Madame's short residence to get up your French a little... You will be glad of this, my dear, when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else.

In my time first cousins did not meet like strangers. But we are learning modesty from the Americans, and old English ways are too gross for us.

Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exists and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.