*    *    *    *    *

But there was a fly in the ointment, a caterpillar in the salad.

*    *    *    *    *

And he was about to dilate on the theme when she interrupted him.

*    *    *    *    *

"Anybody who was content to call you fairly good-looking would describe
the Taj Mahal as a pretty nifty tomb."
"But that is not the point. What I mean is, if I marry a nonentity I shall
be a nonentity myself for ever. And I would sooner die than be a nonentity."

*    *    *    *    *

She could not have gazed at him with a more rapturous intensity
if she had been a small child and he a saucer of ice cream.

*    *    *    *    *

Vladmir Brusiloff had permitted his face to become almost entirely concealed
behind a dense zareba of hair, but his eyes were visible through the undergrowth,
and it seemed to Cuthbert that there was an expression in them not unlike that of a
cat in a strange backyard surrounded by small boys.

*    *    *    *    *

He was not a man who prattled readily, especially in a foreign tongue. He gave the impression
that each word was excavated from his interior by some up-to-date process of mining.

*    *    *    *    *