But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses and that he had not yet stood under the roof.

The door was fastened, and though he had keys in his pocket he had a conviction that none of them would fit.

She was intelligent and generous; it was a fine free nature; but what was she going to do with herself?
This question was irregular, for with most women one had no occasion to ask it.

Most women did with themselves nothing at all; they waited, in attitudes more or less gracefully passive, for a man to come that way and furnish them with a destiny.

Isabel's originality was that she gave one an impression of having intentions of her own.