There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I'm deaf with it. Love is that dirty aborting horror that you took me to. Love is my insides all messed up. It's half catheters and half whirling douches. I know about love. Love always hangs up behind the bathroom door. It smells like lysol. To hell with love. Love is making me happy and then going off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake all night afraid to say my prayers even because I know I have no right to anymore. Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book. All right. I'm through with you and I'm through with love.

Nick went into his room, undressed and got into bed. He heard his father moving around in the living room. Nick lay in the bed with his face on the pillow.

"My heart's broken," he thought. "If I felt this way, my heart must be broken."

After a while he heard his father blow out the lamp and go into his own room. He heard the wind come up in the trees outside and felt it come in cool through the screen. Hey lay for a long time with his face in the pillow, and after a while he forgot about Prudence and finally he went to sleep.

When he awoke in the night he heard the wind in the hemlock trees outside and the waves of the lake coming in on the shore,and he went back to sleep. In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.