Done reading Bars of Iron. Yet another Dell novel completely different from all the others before it! I'm amazed. What a versatile author she was!
The hero is a very young man, and the lady of his interest is a 28 year old widow living with the parson's family-- the widow, as it turns out, of a guy he killed in a barfight when he was an even younger man. Whoa, the drama level was out the ceiling.
Absolutely great stuff until the very end when WW One is allowed to solve the protagonists' problems, along with all other problems currently about, which irritated me a bit. The author's very enthusiastic about it:
"Germany who is going to cut out all the rot of party politics and bind us together as one man! Germany who is going to avert civil war and teach us to love our neighbours! Nothing short of this would have saved us. We've been a mere horde of chattering monkeys lately. Now--all thanks to Germany!--we're going to be men!"
Uh-huh. But Ethel Dell's never made any secret that she thinks the world-spanning British Empire is the Greatest. Thing. Evar.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Rocks of Valpre - not-favorite
Apr 7
Started reading The Rocks of Valpre. One would think it would be pretty good, judging by how many of her other books mention the characters in it, but boy, does it start out boring! This isn't the first time I tried to read it. Chapter one is an English girl playing on a beach, her thoughts including a scorn for Frenchmen, then she meets a very handsome one with a pencil moustache. Um... that's nice and everything, and I hope if she likes him she's able to keep him. But there's just zero interest about that. Seriously, Way of an Eagle starts with the heroine's father picking her protector as being the one man willing to kill her-- interest! Bars of Iron starts with a death, and then a dogfight and a dousing. Keeper of the Door starts with the heroine being so irritated at the hero that she jams a needle into his hand on purpose, where it breaks off. Whoa. But meeting a pretty Frenchman? I'm not into pretty young men of any nationality so thanks all the same. I might make myself read another chapter just because I like Ethel Dell so much.
Apr 14
Done reading Rocks of Valpre. Magnificent in the middle and I couldn't put it down for half a moment in anxiety as to how it would turn out, but now that it's over I'm back to disliking it. I'd say that dingbat heroine didn't deserve the man who got her :-/
Hehe, well it was great in the middle, and such fun to complain about it afterwards!
Started reading The Rocks of Valpre. One would think it would be pretty good, judging by how many of her other books mention the characters in it, but boy, does it start out boring! This isn't the first time I tried to read it. Chapter one is an English girl playing on a beach, her thoughts including a scorn for Frenchmen, then she meets a very handsome one with a pencil moustache. Um... that's nice and everything, and I hope if she likes him she's able to keep him. But there's just zero interest about that. Seriously, Way of an Eagle starts with the heroine's father picking her protector as being the one man willing to kill her-- interest! Bars of Iron starts with a death, and then a dogfight and a dousing. Keeper of the Door starts with the heroine being so irritated at the hero that she jams a needle into his hand on purpose, where it breaks off. Whoa. But meeting a pretty Frenchman? I'm not into pretty young men of any nationality so thanks all the same. I might make myself read another chapter just because I like Ethel Dell so much.
Apr 14
Done reading Rocks of Valpre. Magnificent in the middle and I couldn't put it down for half a moment in anxiety as to how it would turn out, but now that it's over I'm back to disliking it. I'd say that dingbat heroine didn't deserve the man who got her :-/
Hehe, well it was great in the middle, and such fun to complain about it afterwards!
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Top of the World - my commentary
(from the diary)
Just started reading Ethel Dell's The Top of the World now. It's different from the others. The heroine, Sylvia, has a rich country gentleman father and a coarse, bossy stepmother she's trying to deal with. She's the outdoors, hard-working type, but definitely has a bunch of things against her, which makes her sympathetic. She hopes she's not silly, you know? But then, once the hero shows up, she becomes very silly indeed, and reacts as all Dell heroines react, weak and overpowered, and wilting in the heat of the alpha male's very existence.
... Top of the World is set in South Africa, and the hero's an English farmer. He's acquainted with Boers and can speak Dutch. It's one of those classic romance novel plots, the in-name-only convenience marriage, but more plausible than most given the era and the carefully-constructed setup. Sylvia broke away from her oppressive stepmother and fled to South Africa to rejoin her childhood sweetheart, who had been sent out there to work on a farm and prove himself worthy of marrying her. He proves the opposite, doesn't even show up to meet her, but his cousin Burke, who owned the farm, meets her instead. He looks very like Guy only older and tougher. He explains the painful truth to her, and offers to marry her as a solution to her problems. She's an emotionally stable, contented kind of girl who only wants a home and some people, and she likes Africa so far. She thinks they're really going to be great pals, or business partners, and doesn't understand a thing about men. The way she behaves makes sense. The way he behaves makes sense too. Having had a white female in need of rescue dropped onto his doorstep, and having pretended to be non-threatening in order to convince her, now he's trapped into continuing to pretend to be non-threatening. He agrees to all sorts of chivalry with hope of some nookie at a later date. They go to his home and set up happy housekeeping. Every little thing she does is terribly interesting to him, of course. There's a couple of shockingly violent kisses; they can't be usual ones, because he's still trying to pretend he isn't a blond beast, "smile-on-the-face-of-the-tiger" as someone puts it. After each one Sylvia, being the sturdy and honest type, laughingly protests that she doesn't mind, she had said it was all right if he kissed her, didn't she? It's civilization strained to the snapping point. Who could not devour every word of this in breathless anticipation?
Eeeekk, this story is amazing! Sylvia persuades Burke to follow the worthless Guy to his current post as a bartender of some seedy joint, and bring him home so that she can save him. Burke drags his cousin back by emotional force and reinstalls him at the farm again, but Guy, in depression, shoots himself in the chest. Burke has to ride for a doctor, and can only locate a villainous surgeon of no repute whom nobody likes. Sylvia's reaction: "Somehow he made her think of a raven, unscrupulous, probably wholly without pity, possibly wicked, and overwhelmingly intelligent. She avoided his eyes instinctively. They seemed to know too much."
This doctor removes the bullet and oversees Guy's recovery for a couple weeks. He presents the case to Sylvia that she has to give Guy a motivation to live, or he'll die and it'll be Sylvia's fault, and thus trapped, she devotes herself to Guy's care, while Burke moves out of the house into a shed, and stays there in full-time sulking aside from occasional pounces to make innuendo-laden threats to his name-only wife. Guy begins to recover; Sylvia as his constant caregiver wears herself out; the doctor takes her into her bedroom and shoots her full of morphine. The "Top of the World" title refers to her state of drugged euphoria! Burke was previously trying to prevent him from giving it to Guy because the suffering may be terrible but "the morphia habit is worse." Sylvia comes down from the clouds to find Burke inspecting her needle tracks. He asks if this was against her will and she admits "not entirely". The doctor's already been sent packing while she was asleep, Guy's deemed to be able to take care of himself from now on, and Burke's back in the master bedroom. "The big baas has set his house in order," as Guy puts it.
Besides the rest, it's also fascinating just to read a novel like this written in the 1910s. I was never that interested in the period but it's growing on me. It's amazing how much differently people acted and thought! A modern author writing historical fiction could never do it like this. A modern author would include important dates and landmarks to provide setting and proof of having done research. Ethel Dell doesn't bother to, but she includes manners and assumptions that a modern writer would totally miss. It's the things she takes for granted that are most startling to us. For instance, when Sylvia first arrives at Burke's house she hurts her knee and has to lie down, and when she wakes up, the Kaffir servant, Mary Ann, "seemed to have forsaken her, and she was in some uncertainty as to how to proceed when she was at length ready to leave her room." Little Missie can't even walk around an unfamiliar house without a servant to escort her? When Sylvia first begins her career as a housewife, she needs wool and needles right away to knit Burke "proper" socks so he won't have to make do with the store-bought kind any longer!
... OMG this book just keeps getting juicier! The surgeon, Kieff, entices Guy into stealing money from Burke's strongbox, then sets up Sylvia to go after Guy to confront him about it, so that it will look to Burke like a lovers' runaway! It turns out he only saved Guy's life because it suited his amusement. At a glance he understood the richly provocative setup going on and saw possibilities of ruining people for his own amusement. He's always fancied Guy because he's an otherwise-nice English boy on a downward spiral, which he finds irresistible.
Sylvia's pursuit of Guy is ill-fated. She took the train rather than ride forty miles, but the train had problems and had to sit in the sun for a few hours, and she "thought that the smell of Kaffirs would haunt her all her life."
When Burke catches her and confronts her, she pulls the romance-novel trick of failing to explain things clearly right up front, putting on lots of drama about betrayed trust instead. Blah. But it's overshadowed by such lines as: "He uttered a scoffing sound too bitter to be called a laugh. 'Have I ever been as near to you as this devil who has made himself notorious with Kaffir women for as long as he has been out here?' She flinched momentarily from the stark cruelty of his words."
Ha! That's the worst possible disgrace, too bad for Burke even to have mentioned to a lady before now! Worse than his previous offenses which Sylvia already knew about such as drunkenness and thievery.
In the hotel lobby, Kieff makes a joke about Sylvia's marriage status in front of a crowd of laughing Boers. Sylvia suddenly grows a spine and demands an explanation. Kieff explains in such a manner as to insinuate even more, and Burke comes in at just the right moment to overhear him, and beats him half to death with a horse-whip. Afterwards Kieff's given rum and made to apologize, and later overdoses himself on opium and dies and is missed by nobody.
Sylvia asks a friend "somewhat nervously if the death of Kieff were likely to hinder their return, but he laughed at the notion. Why, of course not! Burke hadn't killed the man. Such affairs as the one she had witnessed the night before were by no means unusual in Brennerstadt. Besides, it was a clear case of opium poisoning, and everyone had known that he would die of it sooner or later. It was the greatest mercy he had gone, and so she wasn't to worry about that! No one would have any regrets for Kieff except the people he had ruined."
Whoa.
From Top of the World:
"She'll manage all right. She's very capable. She is helping me with the farm. The life seems to suit her all right, only I shall have to see she doesn't work too hard."
"That you will, my son. This climate's hard on women. Look at poor Bill Merston's wife! When she came out, she was as pretty and as sweet as a little wild rose. And now--well, it gives you the heartache to look at her."
"Does it?" said Burke grimly. "She doesn't affect me that way. If I were in Merston's place,--well, she wouldn't look like that for long."
"Wouldn't she though?" Kelly looked at him with interest. "You always were a goer, old man. And what would your treatment consist of?"
"Discipline," said Burke briefly. "No woman is happy if she despises her husband. If I were in Merston's place, I would see to it that she did not despise me. That's the secret of her trouble. It's poison to a woman to look down on her husband."
"Egad!" laughed Kelly. "But you've studied the subject? Well, here's to the fair lady of your choice! May she fulfil all expectations and be a comfort to you all the days of your life!"
Just started reading Ethel Dell's The Top of the World now. It's different from the others. The heroine, Sylvia, has a rich country gentleman father and a coarse, bossy stepmother she's trying to deal with. She's the outdoors, hard-working type, but definitely has a bunch of things against her, which makes her sympathetic. She hopes she's not silly, you know? But then, once the hero shows up, she becomes very silly indeed, and reacts as all Dell heroines react, weak and overpowered, and wilting in the heat of the alpha male's very existence.
... Top of the World is set in South Africa, and the hero's an English farmer. He's acquainted with Boers and can speak Dutch. It's one of those classic romance novel plots, the in-name-only convenience marriage, but more plausible than most given the era and the carefully-constructed setup. Sylvia broke away from her oppressive stepmother and fled to South Africa to rejoin her childhood sweetheart, who had been sent out there to work on a farm and prove himself worthy of marrying her. He proves the opposite, doesn't even show up to meet her, but his cousin Burke, who owned the farm, meets her instead. He looks very like Guy only older and tougher. He explains the painful truth to her, and offers to marry her as a solution to her problems. She's an emotionally stable, contented kind of girl who only wants a home and some people, and she likes Africa so far. She thinks they're really going to be great pals, or business partners, and doesn't understand a thing about men. The way she behaves makes sense. The way he behaves makes sense too. Having had a white female in need of rescue dropped onto his doorstep, and having pretended to be non-threatening in order to convince her, now he's trapped into continuing to pretend to be non-threatening. He agrees to all sorts of chivalry with hope of some nookie at a later date. They go to his home and set up happy housekeeping. Every little thing she does is terribly interesting to him, of course. There's a couple of shockingly violent kisses; they can't be usual ones, because he's still trying to pretend he isn't a blond beast, "smile-on-the-face-of-the-tiger" as someone puts it. After each one Sylvia, being the sturdy and honest type, laughingly protests that she doesn't mind, she had said it was all right if he kissed her, didn't she? It's civilization strained to the snapping point. Who could not devour every word of this in breathless anticipation?
Eeeekk, this story is amazing! Sylvia persuades Burke to follow the worthless Guy to his current post as a bartender of some seedy joint, and bring him home so that she can save him. Burke drags his cousin back by emotional force and reinstalls him at the farm again, but Guy, in depression, shoots himself in the chest. Burke has to ride for a doctor, and can only locate a villainous surgeon of no repute whom nobody likes. Sylvia's reaction: "Somehow he made her think of a raven, unscrupulous, probably wholly without pity, possibly wicked, and overwhelmingly intelligent. She avoided his eyes instinctively. They seemed to know too much."
This doctor removes the bullet and oversees Guy's recovery for a couple weeks. He presents the case to Sylvia that she has to give Guy a motivation to live, or he'll die and it'll be Sylvia's fault, and thus trapped, she devotes herself to Guy's care, while Burke moves out of the house into a shed, and stays there in full-time sulking aside from occasional pounces to make innuendo-laden threats to his name-only wife. Guy begins to recover; Sylvia as his constant caregiver wears herself out; the doctor takes her into her bedroom and shoots her full of morphine. The "Top of the World" title refers to her state of drugged euphoria! Burke was previously trying to prevent him from giving it to Guy because the suffering may be terrible but "the morphia habit is worse." Sylvia comes down from the clouds to find Burke inspecting her needle tracks. He asks if this was against her will and she admits "not entirely". The doctor's already been sent packing while she was asleep, Guy's deemed to be able to take care of himself from now on, and Burke's back in the master bedroom. "The big baas has set his house in order," as Guy puts it.
Besides the rest, it's also fascinating just to read a novel like this written in the 1910s. I was never that interested in the period but it's growing on me. It's amazing how much differently people acted and thought! A modern author writing historical fiction could never do it like this. A modern author would include important dates and landmarks to provide setting and proof of having done research. Ethel Dell doesn't bother to, but she includes manners and assumptions that a modern writer would totally miss. It's the things she takes for granted that are most startling to us. For instance, when Sylvia first arrives at Burke's house she hurts her knee and has to lie down, and when she wakes up, the Kaffir servant, Mary Ann, "seemed to have forsaken her, and she was in some uncertainty as to how to proceed when she was at length ready to leave her room." Little Missie can't even walk around an unfamiliar house without a servant to escort her? When Sylvia first begins her career as a housewife, she needs wool and needles right away to knit Burke "proper" socks so he won't have to make do with the store-bought kind any longer!
... OMG this book just keeps getting juicier! The surgeon, Kieff, entices Guy into stealing money from Burke's strongbox, then sets up Sylvia to go after Guy to confront him about it, so that it will look to Burke like a lovers' runaway! It turns out he only saved Guy's life because it suited his amusement. At a glance he understood the richly provocative setup going on and saw possibilities of ruining people for his own amusement. He's always fancied Guy because he's an otherwise-nice English boy on a downward spiral, which he finds irresistible.
Sylvia's pursuit of Guy is ill-fated. She took the train rather than ride forty miles, but the train had problems and had to sit in the sun for a few hours, and she "thought that the smell of Kaffirs would haunt her all her life."
When Burke catches her and confronts her, she pulls the romance-novel trick of failing to explain things clearly right up front, putting on lots of drama about betrayed trust instead. Blah. But it's overshadowed by such lines as: "He uttered a scoffing sound too bitter to be called a laugh. 'Have I ever been as near to you as this devil who has made himself notorious with Kaffir women for as long as he has been out here?' She flinched momentarily from the stark cruelty of his words."
Ha! That's the worst possible disgrace, too bad for Burke even to have mentioned to a lady before now! Worse than his previous offenses which Sylvia already knew about such as drunkenness and thievery.
In the hotel lobby, Kieff makes a joke about Sylvia's marriage status in front of a crowd of laughing Boers. Sylvia suddenly grows a spine and demands an explanation. Kieff explains in such a manner as to insinuate even more, and Burke comes in at just the right moment to overhear him, and beats him half to death with a horse-whip. Afterwards Kieff's given rum and made to apologize, and later overdoses himself on opium and dies and is missed by nobody.
Sylvia asks a friend "somewhat nervously if the death of Kieff were likely to hinder their return, but he laughed at the notion. Why, of course not! Burke hadn't killed the man. Such affairs as the one she had witnessed the night before were by no means unusual in Brennerstadt. Besides, it was a clear case of opium poisoning, and everyone had known that he would die of it sooner or later. It was the greatest mercy he had gone, and so she wasn't to worry about that! No one would have any regrets for Kieff except the people he had ruined."
Whoa.
From Top of the World:
"She'll manage all right. She's very capable. She is helping me with the farm. The life seems to suit her all right, only I shall have to see she doesn't work too hard."
"That you will, my son. This climate's hard on women. Look at poor Bill Merston's wife! When she came out, she was as pretty and as sweet as a little wild rose. And now--well, it gives you the heartache to look at her."
"Does it?" said Burke grimly. "She doesn't affect me that way. If I were in Merston's place,--well, she wouldn't look like that for long."
"Wouldn't she though?" Kelly looked at him with interest. "You always were a goer, old man. And what would your treatment consist of?"
"Discipline," said Burke briefly. "No woman is happy if she despises her husband. If I were in Merston's place, I would see to it that she did not despise me. That's the secret of her trouble. It's poison to a woman to look down on her husband."
"Egad!" laughed Kelly. "But you've studied the subject? Well, here's to the fair lady of your choice! May she fulfil all expectations and be a comfort to you all the days of your life!"
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Greatheart: SO SWEET!!!
(I'm just copying parts that I wrote in my diary :-)
Reading Greatheart while walking for exercise, and yes, a little while after that. Written by Ethel Dell back in the 1910s. It's a wonderful book, absolutely wonderful. It's so thoughtful, so deep and complicated. The characters have consciences and feel that confusion and obligation that civilized Christians should, which is much different from the way people are assumed to behave today. Even the character is named after one in Pilgrim's Progress! The girl in this story is a tame, happy, sweet little thing, Cinderella she may be, but she's absolutely destined for the sweet and self-sacrificing younger brother of the Prince. The Prince is an alpha male, aristocratic, autocratic and overwhelming, and perfectly matched by a society beauty without much imagination. There gets to be a mismatch as Cinderella is thrilled to have gotten the Prince for once in her life and we, the dear readers, are in mortal terror for a while.
"I believe I could do lots of things if I only had the chance," she murmured to herself; and then she was suddenly plunged into the memory of another occasion when she had received summary and austere punishment for omitting scales from her practising. But then no one ever liked doing what they must, and she had never had any real taste for music; or if she had had, it had vanished long since under the uninspiring goad of compulsion.
But Isabel's hand was on hers in a moment; her eyes, full of understanding, looked earnest friendship into hers. "Oh, I know," she said. "It is the little things that gall us all, until--until some great--some fundamental--sorrow wrenches our very lives in twain. And then--and then--one can almost laugh to think one ever cared about them."
Reading Greatheart while walking for exercise, and yes, a little while after that. Written by Ethel Dell back in the 1910s. It's a wonderful book, absolutely wonderful. It's so thoughtful, so deep and complicated. The characters have consciences and feel that confusion and obligation that civilized Christians should, which is much different from the way people are assumed to behave today. Even the character is named after one in Pilgrim's Progress! The girl in this story is a tame, happy, sweet little thing, Cinderella she may be, but she's absolutely destined for the sweet and self-sacrificing younger brother of the Prince. The Prince is an alpha male, aristocratic, autocratic and overwhelming, and perfectly matched by a society beauty without much imagination. There gets to be a mismatch as Cinderella is thrilled to have gotten the Prince for once in her life and we, the dear readers, are in mortal terror for a while.
"I believe I could do lots of things if I only had the chance," she murmured to herself; and then she was suddenly plunged into the memory of another occasion when she had received summary and austere punishment for omitting scales from her practising. But then no one ever liked doing what they must, and she had never had any real taste for music; or if she had had, it had vanished long since under the uninspiring goad of compulsion.
But Isabel's hand was on hers in a moment; her eyes, full of understanding, looked earnest friendship into hers. "Oh, I know," she said. "It is the little things that gall us all, until--until some great--some fundamental--sorrow wrenches our very lives in twain. And then--and then--one can almost laugh to think one ever cared about them."
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Way of an Eagle. Wow!!!!
Jan 17
I read an article about Elinor Glyn and Edith Hull that mentioned another story called Way of an Eagle, by Ethel Dell. It's free and I put it on the palm, and it is absolutely fascinating. That's the kind of fiction I like, really love.
Jan 21
My Palm's apparently dead. I charged it, but it hasn't shown life all day. I couldn't read any more of Way of an Eagle, so I printed the last section of it with tiny font in five columns, and read the rest of it by flashlight in bed, bawling my eyeballs out, of course. What a magnificent story, melodrama and passion and sacrifice coming out every seam. Refreshing, too, that the characters are all casually assumed to be Christians.
I LOVE the philosophy this author works into everything! Muriel's destined for Nick, but she thinks she wants Blake, who's tall and blond and handsome and gallant. Blake is just totally wrong for her, and Nick is right. She manages to get engaged to Blake at one point (since Daisy, the woman Blake truly loves, has already married someone else):
"What I mean is this," said Nick. "You won't own it, of course, but you are cheating, and you are afraid to stop. There isn't one woman in ten thousand who has the pluck to throw down the cards when once she has begun to cheat. She goes on--as you will go on--to the end of her life, simply because she daren't do otherwise. You are out of the straight, Muriel. That's why everything is such a hideous failure. You are going to marry the wrong man, and you know it."
Yet Daisy's married to a nice guy she doesn't love at all, and a series of crises have parted her from him and exposed her to temptation with her lifelong true love Blake again. Nick says to Daisy:
"Daisy, give him up, dear! Give him up! You can do it if you will, if your love is great enough. I know how infernally hard it is to do. I've done it myself. It means tearing your very heart out. But it will be worth it--it must be worth it--afterwards. You are bound--some time--to reap what you have sown."
The title itself comes from Proverbs as explained on the title page: "There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid."
Here's a passage from the middle. Muriel's in England engaged to Blake, and Nick's in India with the husband Daisy left behind:
Nick seated himself on the edge of the table, and smote him on the shoulder. "My dear chap," he said, with a sudden burst of energy, "you're only at the beginning of things. It isn't just praying now and then that does it. You've got to keep up the steam, never slack for an instant, whatever happens. The harder going it is, the more likely you are to win through if you stick to it. But directly you slack, you lose ground. If you've only got the grit to go on praying, praying hard, even against your own convictions, you'll get it sooner or later. You are bound to get it. They say God doesn't always grant prayer because the thing you want may not do you any good. That's gammon--futile gammon. If you want it hard enough, and keep on clamouring for it, it becomes the very thing of all others you need--the great essential. And you'll get it for that very reason. It's sheer pluck that counts, nothing else--the pluck to go on fighting when you know perfectly well you're beaten, the pluck to hang on and worry, worry, worry, till you get your heart's desire." He sprang up with a wide-flung gesture. "I'm doing it myself," he said, and his voice rang with a certain grim elation. "I'm doing it myself. And God knows I sha'n't give Him any peace till I'm satisfied. I may be small, but if I were no bigger than a mosquito, I'd keep on buzzing."
I read an article about Elinor Glyn and Edith Hull that mentioned another story called Way of an Eagle, by Ethel Dell. It's free and I put it on the palm, and it is absolutely fascinating. That's the kind of fiction I like, really love.
Jan 21
My Palm's apparently dead. I charged it, but it hasn't shown life all day. I couldn't read any more of Way of an Eagle, so I printed the last section of it with tiny font in five columns, and read the rest of it by flashlight in bed, bawling my eyeballs out, of course. What a magnificent story, melodrama and passion and sacrifice coming out every seam. Refreshing, too, that the characters are all casually assumed to be Christians.
I LOVE the philosophy this author works into everything! Muriel's destined for Nick, but she thinks she wants Blake, who's tall and blond and handsome and gallant. Blake is just totally wrong for her, and Nick is right. She manages to get engaged to Blake at one point (since Daisy, the woman Blake truly loves, has already married someone else):
"What I mean is this," said Nick. "You won't own it, of course, but you are cheating, and you are afraid to stop. There isn't one woman in ten thousand who has the pluck to throw down the cards when once she has begun to cheat. She goes on--as you will go on--to the end of her life, simply because she daren't do otherwise. You are out of the straight, Muriel. That's why everything is such a hideous failure. You are going to marry the wrong man, and you know it."
Yet Daisy's married to a nice guy she doesn't love at all, and a series of crises have parted her from him and exposed her to temptation with her lifelong true love Blake again. Nick says to Daisy:
"Daisy, give him up, dear! Give him up! You can do it if you will, if your love is great enough. I know how infernally hard it is to do. I've done it myself. It means tearing your very heart out. But it will be worth it--it must be worth it--afterwards. You are bound--some time--to reap what you have sown."
The title itself comes from Proverbs as explained on the title page: "There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid."
Here's a passage from the middle. Muriel's in England engaged to Blake, and Nick's in India with the husband Daisy left behind:
Nick seated himself on the edge of the table, and smote him on the shoulder. "My dear chap," he said, with a sudden burst of energy, "you're only at the beginning of things. It isn't just praying now and then that does it. You've got to keep up the steam, never slack for an instant, whatever happens. The harder going it is, the more likely you are to win through if you stick to it. But directly you slack, you lose ground. If you've only got the grit to go on praying, praying hard, even against your own convictions, you'll get it sooner or later. You are bound to get it. They say God doesn't always grant prayer because the thing you want may not do you any good. That's gammon--futile gammon. If you want it hard enough, and keep on clamouring for it, it becomes the very thing of all others you need--the great essential. And you'll get it for that very reason. It's sheer pluck that counts, nothing else--the pluck to go on fighting when you know perfectly well you're beaten, the pluck to hang on and worry, worry, worry, till you get your heart's desire." He sprang up with a wide-flung gesture. "I'm doing it myself," he said, and his voice rang with a certain grim elation. "I'm doing it myself. And God knows I sha'n't give Him any peace till I'm satisfied. I may be small, but if I were no bigger than a mosquito, I'd keep on buzzing."
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