"There is more reading by the Pool than in all those dreary books."
"A midsummer madness has seized you."
"Yet I would not find cure for my folly."
"But look at your ages. A girl of twenty has done this."
"The young man to the matured woman; the old man to the maid. And this is the reason. The young man looks forward to what is to be, but the old man stares over his shoulder at what is slipping away."
"It is a fancy that must pass. You say she neither reads nor writes."
"She is a lantern by whose light I read the Book of Life."
"Mr. King, are you serious this time or not?"
"Laugh at me if you like. I know what I am loving. She is young and wild—a flower of these hot grounds, quick come to bloom, quick to pass away, and without a soul, even as these bush flowers are without scent. She should sleep upon a couch of blossoms, and go abroad crowned with garlands; and I would play the elderly satyr and pipe her through the summer."