Edith Wharton

Autres Temps... Edith Wharton

Mrs. Lidcote, as the huge menacing mass of New York defined itself far off acrossthe waters, shrank back into her corner of the deck and sat listening with a kind ofunreasoning terror to the steady onward drive of the screws. She had set out on the voyage quietly enough, -in what she called her"reasonable" mood, -but the week at sea had given her too much time to think ofthings and had left her too long alone with the past. When she was alone, it was always the past that occupied her. She couldn't getaway from it, and she didn't any longer care to. During her long years of exile shehad made her terms with it, had learned to accept the fact that it would always bethere, huge, obstructing, encumbering, bigger and more dominant than anythingthe future could ever conjure up. And, at any rate, she was sure of it, sheunderstood it, knew how to reckon with it; she had learned to screen and manageand protect it as one does an afflicted member of one's famil