"At Mrs Lippincote's" [.]

[fiefoe]

The phrase "gently devastating" stayed with me throughout the book.

• "Like all the wives of sombre men, she froths and seethes and bubbles, keeps herself at boiling-point ready for emergencies."
• "When I saw him giving you that piece of skirt I was flabbergasted. I simply didn't know what to say or think."
• "There is something so foreign about your cooking," said Mrs Mallory kindly, not quite knowing what it was - the sensation of garlic in her mouth.
• Each time he mentions a fashionable restaurant or good wine or an important friend a solemnity is given to the occasion, as if a flag is planted and unfurled.
• Recklessly she admired and condoled, apologised for the war and felt able to promise better things for the future.
• They awaited the children in silence but with confidence and enthusiasm, as Lady Hester Stanhope is said to have awaited the Messiah.
• "It seems so odd," he complained, and he couldn't say worse than that,
• But now, the intimacy, the delightful situation of Roddy pleading for her help, the idea of Julia vanquished, were all thrown away because she was made to pace the streets, up and down the pitch-dark unromantic pavements.

One degree more:

• "My dear," he said, "I would never choose this life if I were starting again, although I've been happy and it has lasted me out... There's pride in it, but then there usually is in loneliness. .. When you have a lot of people, then you don't need to find things to take a pride in."
• "And then," he continued, "there are all the people who refuse to have their morale destroyed. They're the worst part of the whole affair."
• 'When we are young, or well, we say "I like" or "I hate"; we never say "It is good for me," "It is bad for me."'
• "All that any of us wants is to be misunderstood."
• "I know this - you think me a ridiculous figure, stiff with my own dignity, acting a melancholy but undistinguished role, falsely romantic. All right. But if I am a poseur, I am not at the same time a hypocrite."

__ a rather bogus book about China / had no fund of back-chat for them
__ illuminated by the gin / Their eyes, so socially bright / in the peace that follows violent emotion
__ in the robust tone of one who does not attempt to understand his children
__ the moving river dinted with light / the translucent hoods of the foxgloves
__ (ruins:) through immense lawn-floored rooms open to the sky

__ "I suppose you meant 'bloody'," said Felicity, with an air of sophistication and disillusionment.
__ "There's no use going to the river," said Felicity, "if we can't go again tomorrow." An isolated pleasure seemed threatening and empty.

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