The Native Star

Emily looked at him for a long time. There were so many things she wanted to know—but she wanted not to know them even more. She didn’t want any more answers. He had been the one thing she could trust, the one person she could rely on. She wanted to beg him to be that way again. But it wasn’t him who had changed. It was her. It was her own credulity she really wanted back. And credulity, like virtue, could be lost only once.

“Dignity is like morality,” Mirabilis barked. “Too much is as bad as too little.”

You know, there’s one thing about you that always astonishes me. The longer you talk, the wronger you get.

Senator Stanton? The man who’s sold his own soul so many times that no one can figure out who actually owns it?

She wanted to crawl into his arms and be soothed, and soothe him in return, and forget all the grand ideas she’d ever had about true love, and the necessity for it. Because true love was a load of baloney. Finding a good friend...a good friend who trusted you...was more than enough.

“Still feeling guilty, are we? I’d have thought you’d be over that by now.”

“I have a nettlesome little thing called a conscience,” Emily hissed. “Ever hear of it?”

“They’re out of fashion in New York,” Stanton said, and though she guessed she was joking, he didn’t sound humorous.