From the outside, these people look passive, look weak even, look as though they are failing to stand up for themselves.

From the inside, they are performing the hardest and most consequential act available to a human being, which is the mastery of their own reaction.

I did not slap Marguerite, and to Bristol, watching, it must have looked like weakness, like the same old Odette who would fold and apologize.

It was the exact opposite.

It was the single strongest thing I have ever done, and its strength was precisely that it did not look like strength, because true self-command never does.

It is quiet.