But you are too lovely even to care to be kind as others are.

He had been held to her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he could not break.

When the love-led man had ceased from his labors Bathsheba came and looked him in the face. ‘Gabriel, will you stay on with me?’ she said, smiling winningly, and not troubling to bring her lips...

You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always

Don’t take on about her, Gabriel. What difference does it make whose sweetheart she is, since she can’t be yours?”That’s the very thing I say to myself,’ said Gabriel.

It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the method is the...