She posed as being more indolent than she felt, for fear of finding herself less able than she could wish.

And because no one answered or cared and a conversation went on without her she felt profoundly lonely, suspecting once more for herself a particular doom of exclusion. Something of the trees in their intimacy of shadow was shared by the husband and wife and their host in the tree-shadowed room. She thought of love with its gift of importance. "I must break in on all this," she thought as she looked around the room.

To feel is to go to the places you were.

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.

If traveling was free, you'd never see me again.

She said, "Right now, while we have this time, I'm not going to do any of that other stuff. I'm going to seize this moment and simply enjoy being with Jesus while I can." Mary made a deliberate choice. She wasn't being lazy and using company as an excuse to get out of helping her sister with chores. She was choosing to focus on what mattered the most.