In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set… - Edith Wharton

Set wide the window. Let me drink the day. I loved light ever, light in eye and brain — No tapers mirrored in long palace floors, Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles, But just the common dusty wind-blown day That roofs earth's millions.

He had come on her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. That is how she looks when she is alone! had been his first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced.

His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.