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81 " What’s the value of happiness that can only come at the price of another person’s despair? "
― Diane Setterfield , Once Upon a River
82 " Let me spell it out for you. When a man's got something he don't give tuppence about and another man wants it enough, thruppence will usually do it. "
83 " bare "
84 " Margot was a handsome woman in her late fifties. She could lift barrels without help and had legs so sturdy, she never felt the need to sit down. It was rumored she even slept on her feet, but she had given birth to thirteen children, so clearly she must have lain down sometimes. "
85 " Usually the walk home from the Swan was a time for regret—regret that his joints ached so badly, that he had drunk too much, that the best of life had passed him by and he had only aches and pains ahead of him now, a gradual decline till at the end he would sink into the grave. "
86 " Her knowledge of her own mind was what he admired about her. To expect her to bend to his wishes would be to expect her to be other than herself. "
87 " Back at the Swan, the cat was asleep, curled against the chimney breast, which still exhaled a gentle warmth. Its eyelids flickered withthe images of cat dreams that would be even more perplexing to us than the stories our human brains concoct nocturnally. Its ear twitched and the dream faded instantly. "
88 " We cannot know what entering sleep feels like, for by the time it is complete the ability to register it to memory is lost. But we all know the gently plummeting feeling that precedes falling asleep and gives it its name. "
89 " He raised his head to work out whether the memory was genuine or whether it was some curious reverse echo by which the present seems to duplicate itself "
90 " It was odd to think that only a few years ago she had been Helena Greville. It seemed a lot longer. When she thought about that girl now it was as if she was thinking about someone she used to know, and know quite well, but would never see again. Helena Greville was gone for good. "
91 " A man like me gets used to recognizing himself from the inside. The inside is what I am familiar with. Nor am I much given to studying my outward appearance in the looking glass. It is a curious thing, to see oneself in a photograph. It is a meeting with the outer man. "
92 " She's not coming back.""No." He knew it was true. He had the feeling that the world might easily stop turning without the girl in it. Every hour was arduous, and when it was over, you had to start again with a new one, no better. He wondered how long he would be able to keep it going. "
93 " When she felt the baby turn in her underwater world she remembered Quietly. The future was unfathomable, but with every heartbeat she carried her daughter towards it. "
94 " It was surprising how a man’s mind might remain half in shadow until the right confidant appeared, "
95 " Helena was very quiet these days. She seemed pleased about the baby, talked from time to time about plans for their lives to come, but her liveliness had gone. Future life and past losses coexisted in her, two halves of a single experience, and she bore her grief and her hope in a subdued manner. "
96 " for on a summer day winter always seems like something you have dreamt or heard spoken of and not a thing you have lived. "
97 " She stares up- and downriver in search of something. Something she longs for. Something she has been expecting every day, and every day it doesn’t come, and still she waits and still she looks and still she yearns, but the hope dwindles with every day that passes. Now she waits hopelessly. "
98 " its feet had been in water, but the cushions were sound. The red rug could not make up its mind whether to float or sink; every motion of the water caused it to shift with weighty indecision. "
99 " Death did not frighten her. In those years she had tended the dying, witnessed their demise, and laid out the dead. Death by sickness. Death in childbirth. Death by accident. Death by malice, once or twice. Death as the welcome visitor to great age. "
100 " And now, dear reader, the story is over. It is time for you to cross the bridge once more and return to the world you came from. This river, which is and is not the Thames, must continue flowing without you. You have haunted here long enough, and besides, surely you have rivers of your own to attend to? "