Above the fields, huddled against the white immensities of land and sky, was one of those lonely
New England farmhouses that make the landscape lonelier. “That’s my place,” said Frome.
Ethan touched the further end of the strip of stuff that Mattie was hemming. She sewed on in
silence, while he sat in fascinated contemplation of the way her hands went up and down, just
as he had seen a pair of birds make short perpendicular flights over a nest they were building. It
seemed to him that a warm current flowed toward him along the strip of stuff.
— Edith Wharton, ETHAN FROME, 1911
