" Before he could speak and harm her with words while she lay naked and exposed, while he prepared a judgment, she was preparing her metamorphosis, so that whatever Sabina he struck down she could abandon like a disguise, shedding the self he had seized upon and say: "That was not me."
Any devastating words addressed to the Sabina he had possessed, the primitive one, could not reach her then; she was already halfway out of the forest of their desire, the core already far away, invulnerable, protected by flight. What remained was a costume: it was piled on the floor of his room, and empty of her. "

― Anaïs Nin , A Spy in the House of Love (Cities of the Interior, #4)