I crossed the room to him. "I love you," I said in a rush, afraid I would change my mind.
"Charles," he replied.

Neither Rose nor Charles liked to talk much of their adventures with the trolls, but some of the so-called "softskins" whom they had brought out of Niflheim, as well as the crew of the ship Soren had hired to go north to find Rose, must have spread the story, because for many years afterward, there were tales of a race of trolls living on top of the world.
Only Rose and her white bear know the whole truth of it.

She would search for him.
In the land that lay east of the sun and west of the moon.
But there was no way there.

Overhead hung a summer sky furrowed with the rush of rockets; and from the east a late moon, pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the coast, sent across the bay a shaft of brightness which paled to ashes in the red glitter of the illuminated boats.

All the lies, all the ways we have of trying to make life simple for ourselves by putting people into boxes marked black, white, good, bad, when all of us are victims of our own prejudices.

One of the the things she most liked about the city -apart from all its obvious attractions, the theatre, the galleries, the exhilarating walks by the river- was that so few people ever asked you personal questions.