Inner beauty lasts longer than the more obvious seductions, so throw away the miniskirt and thigh-length boots.

Life often presents you with difficult choices. But who made up the rules? Why choose at all?

Guy suddenly wanted to scald his face, gain fifty pounds, shear his hair. He was sick of his beauty, his “eternal” beauty. People thought he was purer, more intelligent, kinder, nobler than he was because they ascribed all these virtues to him. What if he were stripped of his looks, if he stabbed the grotesque painting in the attic? If they saw him for what he really was – empty-headed, vicieux (how did you translate that? “Riddled with vices?”), narcisse? Used to being indulged and pursued, terrified he’d outlive his fatal appeal and yet longing to be free of it?

What must it be like for a woman to live with power over men rivaled only by God for the first third of her life, build her identity over her looks, only to feel it slip away as time tumbles by? Feel the shift in how people treat her, as though getting old is a contagious affliction?

When all that surfaces fade, what's left, is what it really matters.

But Sir Alistair’s gaze was different. Those other men had looked at her with lust or speculation or crass curiosity, but they hadn’t been looking at her really. They’d been looking at what she represented to them: physical love or a valuable prize or an object to be gawked at. When Sir Alistair stared at her, well, he was looking at her.