It was wonderful to be alive! And all done by love.
Love! More, more, more love! And then death, if it must come! For, after all, to Nedda death was so far away, so unimaginably dim and distant, that it did not really count.
While she sat, letting her fingers, that were growing slowly black, scrabble the grass and fern, a feeling came on her of a Presence, a creature with wings above and around, that seemed to have on its face a long, mysterious smile of which she, Nedda, was herself a tiny twinkle.
She would bring Derek here.

They two would sit together and let the clouds go over them, and she would learn all that he really thought, and tell him all her longings and fears; they would be silent, too, loving each other too much to talk.

She made elaborate plans of what they were to do and see, beginning with the East End and the National Gallery, and ending with sunrise from Parliament Hill; but she somehow knew that nothing would happen as she had designed.

If only the first moment were not different from what she hoped! She sat there so long that she rose quite stiff, and so hungry that she could not help going home and stealing into the kitchen.

It was three o'clock, and the old cook, as usual, asleep in an armchair, with her apron thrown up between her face and the fire.