Tipping the Velvet

They walked together, and the world smiled to see it! They embraced on the street, and strangers were glad! While all the time I lived pale as a worm, cast out from pleasure, from comfort and ease.

a quick, sharp, agonised cry, as if the paper was hot and had burned me. The cry became a low, ragged moan that went on, and on, until I wondered that I had breath enough left to make it.

I suspected that my boots had worn their way right through my stockings, and had started on the bare flesh of my toes and heels and ankles

You little slut!’ she said. ‘You little trollop! You whore, you harlot, you strumpet, you bitch!

They did her a cold roast after the manner of the Romans, goose stuffed with turkey stuffed with chicken stuffed with quail - the quail, I think, having a truffle in it.

I knew winter had arrived only when Diana’s walking-dresses changed from silk to corduroy, her cloaks from grenadine to sable; and when my own closet rail sagged with astrakhan, and camel’s-hair, and tweed.