They had midmorning coffee in a small warm shop and watched the passers-by scurry through the cold. They found a carriage and drove to the Art Museum. Arm in arm they walked through the high rooms, through the rich glow of light reflected from the paintings. In the quietness, in the warmth, in the air that took on a timelessness from the old paintings and statuary, William Stoner felt an outrush of affection for the tall, delicate girl who walked beside him, and he felt aquiet passion rise within him, warm and formally sensuous, like the colors that came out from the walls around him. - P79
He worked in the fields for a day or two, helping his father and the Negro hired hand; but the give of the warmmoist clods beneath his feet and the smell of the new-turned earth in his nostrils evoked in him no feeling of return or familiarity. - P82
He spent most of each day in the library, sometimes returning to Edith and the apartment late in the evening, through the heavy sweet scent of honeysuckle that moved in the warm air and among the delicate leaves of dogwood trees that rustled and turned, ghost-like in the darkness. His eyes burned from their concentration upon dim texts, his mind was heavy with what it observed, and his fingers tingled numbly from the retained feel of old leather and board and paper; but he was open to the world through which for a moment he walked, and he found some joy in it. - P82
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