Quotes from Francis Brett Young

When they crossed the street, he didn't even take her arm. Of course, a faun wouldn't.

Next time?" he smiled; his eyes brightened; he was no longer a divinely superior person, but an interested male.

It was rather fun, as a matter of fact, to adventure into this world of make-believe; it gave her a feeling of rich, unexerted power; kept open a safe line of retreat with her boats unburned. His little, high-brow superiority was really comical — almost pathetic.

She was secure in the armour of her anonymity. Even if he did kiss her again, as he probably would, the person whom he kissed would be an imaginary person, a creature whom she had invented for her own amusement, not herself.

I want you to be my mistress." Of course she had known what was coming; yet, when it came, some radical prudishness within her was offended by the word. She stifled its promptings vigorously. They were unworthy of her — unworthy of her fine, free, emancipated, passionate modernity. What would become of their frank and glorious equality, their high-flown theories, if she refused him? And yet...

All the' expensive artificialities of life at Cannes, where one saw exactly the same people as at home in slightly thinner clothes, bored her equally. Their transplanted conventions made her feel a traitor to her kind. Her only relief from that hothouse atmosphere was to be found in the flowery foothills of the Maritime Alps, where she went for long, lonely walks, always thinking of Cyril, in a pagan setting that called for his faun-like presence.

All through the journey, except when she was locked in her sleeper, he did his manly best to entertain her with his rich store of personal and political gossip; but his best, alas, was far too manly for Helena.