you pierce my soul...

Politely drew back and stopped to give them way.


He has walked with me, sometimes, from one end of the sand to the other, without saying a word.


In spite of the formidable father and sister in the background.


Such a letter could not be read without putting Anne in a glow.

Illustrations by C.E. Brock for Jane Austen's Persuasion, 1909. See all 24 here, as well as Brock's illustrations for other Austen novels over here. Persuasion is certainly my favorite of Jane's works. It's one of the three (with Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park) that I read before seeing any adaptations. There's really such an enthralling sort of magic to them when you don't know the stories, and yet I can read them over again with the same excitement. I wish there was an illustration for Captain Wentworth's letter to Anne Elliot (I'm a hopeless romantic, that's one of my favorite parts in the book). If you've never read it - as I know a lot of people who've read Pride and Prejudice and not this gem - here's what you're missing:

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W. I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.

Beautiful, isn't it? I very nearly have it memorized, silly me. Once a Janeite, always a Janeite!