Mr. Arbuthnot certainly was not prepared for her response to his statement that February was a dangerous month. "It is," answered Laura with almost violent agreement. "If you are a were-wolf, and very likely you may be, for lots of people are without knowing, February, of all months, is the month when you are most likely to go out on a dark windy night and worry sheep."

When the better days to come came, they proved to be modelled as closely as possible upon the days that were past. It was astonishing what little difference differences had made.

Out of these she had contrived for herself a sort of mental fur coat. Roasted chestnuts could be bought and taken home for bedroom eating. Secondhand book-shops were never so enticing; and the combination of east winds and London water made it allowable to experiment in the most expensive soaps. Coming back from her expeditions, westward from the city with the sunset in her eyes, or eastward from a waning Kew, she would pause for a sumptuous and furtive tea, eating maron glaces with a silver fork in the reflecting warm glitter of a smart pastry-cook's. These things were exciting enough to be pleasurable, for she kept them secret.

Women have such vivid imaginations, and lead such dull lives. Their pleasure in life is so soon over; they are so dependent on others, and their dependence so soon becomes a nuisance.

Even if other people still find them quite safe and usual, and go on poking with them, they know in their hearts how dangerous, how incalculable, how extraordinary they are.

One doesn't become a witch to run round being harmful, or to run round being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It's to escape all that - to have a life of one's own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread a day, the workhouse dietary is scientifically calculated to support life.

Lovely to be with people who prefer their thoughts to yours, lovely to live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out all night! She had quite decided, not, to do so. It was an adventure, she had never done such a thing before, and yet it seemed most natural.

Sir Ralph Maulgrave, the Satanic Baronet, the libertine, the atheist, who drank out of a skull, who played away his mistress and pistolled the winner, who rode about Buckinghamshire on a zebra, whose conversation had boon too much for Thomas Moore.

One has to offer marriage to a young woman who has picked dead wasps out of one’s armpit.