The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

there must, I thought, be a great deal to conceal if he takes such pains to hide it.

A ghastly hunger gnaws her entrails;

in the middle of the shadows, a white, nacreous glimmer

my little flame caved in and I was left in absolute darkness

the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer,'

Sheltered as my life had been, how could I have failed, even in the world of prim bohemia in which I lived, to have heard hints of his world?

in the midst of my bridal triumph, I felt a pang of loss as if, when he put the gold band on my finger, I had, in some way, ceased to be her child in becoming his wife.

the sheer carnal avarice of it

aristos who’d escaped the guillotine had an ironic fad of tying a red ribbon round their necks at just the point where the blade would have sliced it through, a red ribbon like the memory of a wound.

'There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer,'