“You were utterly, sublimely defenseless against the laughter,” said Katrina. “Marie came by her impracticality honestly, but she fed the aura of joie de vivre that wafted around her—it gave cover to another side of her, no more authentic but intensely more private. Here was the tremulous, self-taxing writer, the aspiring scholar of history, the student of prose and poetry, and the fragile woman who would have loved to be happy in love.”
