I know very little about darkness, Mr Bowden, except that we cannot stop its coming.

I could not tell anymore how much of the screaming came from my own mouth. I was borne up on the swell of it, I was the sound. We were all howling together, the poor and the quality, the boxing girl and the beast inside my breast. If she was a madwoman, then we were all of us with her, and I had never felt such savage elation, nor known that it existed.

I'd become an uncertain creature in her mind, and I found I liked it; she couldn't fathom what else I might be doing when her eyes weren't on me.

I'd no room left in me for thinking of trifling things. I could feel fear start up and try to take down my rage, but I'd not give it up.

Granville did not come to enquire after me, as I had known he would not. I had always considered him made awkward by painful emotion, but now I considered that perhaps hew as only unfeeling.

If I lost all, at least I would have played for it. It had always been my philosophy that one must play, or be a loser two-fold.