And roses suit you so

What she had now was not for her possessing. She was the Madonna of the Cave, Demeter who fashions living things and sends them out into the light. All she had done, and had still to do, would work to accomplish her own loss . . . to make him less a part of her, and more his own. Already the new claimants were waiting.

—Mary Renault, Return to Night (1947)