• Reisden skipped a hundred pages of broken repentance, threw the book with all the others back into the crate, and leaned back, massaging a headache out of his eyes, feeling as if he had spent the morning being raped by Christians. (pg. 158)
• The two men looked at each other like two men who are not discussing a woman's reputation. Reiden shrugged.

"Between ourselves? I would guess they were still warm from each other when it happened. That will be her evidence." "That's no good. I seen that happen before." Daugherty added, a little wistfully, "Is she as good as they say?" "I haven't actually tried yet, but" --Reisden dropped into Cockney "-me virtue's 'urtin' somethin' 'orrible." (pg. 143)

• Reisden casually stood behind the counter, bracing his gun hand with the other, and fired off six shots, steadily as a clock ticks. Daugherty looked at the target solemnly, counted the holes near the center, unclipped it, and folded and pocketed it. "So's to tell Bucky he don't need to worry," he explained.

"Where'd you learn to shoot like that?" Harry asked in spit of himself. Reisden looked at him, uninterested. "Targets don't hurt. That makes them easy." Bastard. (pg. 49)

• He took out the picture of Tasy and looked again. How close could Richard Knight have been to anyone? How close had Reisden been to her? No, surely-- He was afraid, by remembering too closely, he would lose what he had thought they had.

Tasy, did I ever tell you that I did'nt remember my parents? No? Did I ever say, even then, that I wondered who I was? I told you that I loved you; but did you know it hurt me to be close to anyone? Did I tell you that sometimes I was afraid of myself, that my own emotions hurt me, so that I couldn't bear to be talked to or touched? Was I better at acting than I was with you? Was there ever a moment between us, even in bed, when part of me didn't stand aside? Tasy's photography said nothing, just smiled and smiled; Tasy was dead. When he had broken with Graf Leo and gone to study chemistry under Louis, he had taken Tasy with him, knowing very well that marrying her would make the break definitive. Did I marry you to get away from Leo? He took out of its envelope the photograph of William Knight, dead. Tasy dead on the carpet of leaves, her neck broken at that oddangle. Did I want you dead? William Knight dead on the carpet... "All this time, darling," he asked her, "al this bad time, and not even for you?" But Tasy's photograph didn't change expression, because Tasy was dead. And then he was angry; angry for the stupidity and for the waste of years, angry for what he had not been able to tell her, angry for everything he had failed to be. And he knew, finally, how much he had lost with his childhood. And then, because he was Alexander Reisden who had loved her more than he had dared to know, he cried for Tasy at last; but not even that could bring her back. (pg. 177-178)

• He led her over to one of the banquettes. They sat with their arms around each other. He tilted her head up. She was pale, her eyes were closed; she was panting as if she had run a race. "No?" he asked her gently, "or yes?" She nodded her head, silently, yes, as if she were taking a dare; his lips touched hers, and they were kissing desperately, the two of them enlaced in each other's arms. He stroked down the length of her side with the tips of his fingers, and felt her generous hips and thighs beneath the silk of her dress. She kissed him as if he were a wonder; kissed almost like a little girl still, half taught, half awakened. He touched the hollow at the base of her neck, ran his hand down the softness of her inner arm, touched the crook of her elbow and her shoulder blade, made her tremble. She touched his arms and his chest; moved down as far as his waist, blushed and stopped. Every inch of his body was as sensitive to her touch as fingertips or tongue. She moved her hands to his face again, touching his face all over; she trembled and pressed her whole body against his. His need for her ached like his heart. He moved his fingertips over the round tenseness of her breasts. He wanted to go inside her as innocently as a bee inside a flower; he wanted to force her, hurt her, love her, explode inside her like a bomb; and he took her by the shoulders and gently moved her away from him.

"We had better stop now," he said, "or we'll go wrong." (pg. 199-200)

• "My dear, thank you for last night. It was a wonderful experience, which should happen once only." The words were the right ones, exactly what he should say; but they sounded wrong and weak to him, as if he were an old roue making morning-after excuses to some former virgin. "I mean--" He didn't know what he meant, or couldn't explain it to her. "I feel stupid. I was trained as a diplomat, but it seems not to have stuck. Last night commits us to nothing: we do not have to go on, or to avoid each other, or even to feel inordinately guilty. I would like to like you and to have your friendship and trust, as I think I have had, and to feel the same friendship for you. I don't want us ever to be awkward together," he ended, and the whole speech felt like a badly written formal letter. It was the truth but it didn't feel even close enough to be an effective lie." (pg. 206-207).
• When he was eighteen he would have simply thrown her over the nearest sofa and made her happy. Making love to a woman, Graf Leo had said, is the only way to make them stop talking. And allowing onself to be manipulated disarms the opposition. Now he was twenty-seven and listened, and had his doubts, and was not so sure that he was wiser; he was certainly more frustrated, because she had aroused him effortlessly and instantly. But all he did was hold the woman and tell himself, You might as well turn homosexual or cut it off for all the good it does to you. He held her, responding to her gently, until she stiffened in his arms with anger instead of desire and began to cry. (pg. 233)
• He put it in his billfold. She turned around on her chair. She was sitting and he was standing, and her eyes were just about on the level of his groin. She looked up at him deliberately and then leveled her gaze again.

"Did I do all right?" she asked. He took her hand and drew her up out of her chair, standing next to him; the bodice slipped down again, and this time she didn't bother to pull it up. He knew exactly what was going to happen, and it did. They made love standing up, quick and rough, face to face, breath to breath. He knew how to give women pleasure, but that was out of his reach today: He had never performed more quickly, or worse, or more regretted the act during the act itself. When it was done she held her dress around her like a bathtowel and shook her hair out of her face, looking out the window where the last of the sunset was fading. "I'm sorry," he said. He had thought of Perdita during it and all it had got him was that Mrs. Fen was not she. It was simply dangerous to Perdita to think that way. (page 234-235).

• "Dazzled you, but it was easy to dazzle you, wasn't it? You heard what you wanted to hear, piano music, and---" (pg. 236)
• "When she died," he said, "they did an autopsy and she was about a month along with child. I hope she never knew. I hope that she didn't know, because if she did, she didn't tell me." He didn't speak for a long time. "I was driving the car she died in. I thought I had killed her and the child. I thought I knew she was pregnant." He took his hand away. "So now, Perdita, I think you know the very worse about me." (pg. 238)