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Novels, like houses, should have a firm outline, a sound structure and a quality of inevitableness. Wharton insisted on this when she wrote about her own work: "My last page is always latent in my first." A work of art must make you feel that "it could not have been otherwise." No extraneous material and no redundant commentary; "the objective attitude" was what she believed in.

"We've grown old, you and I. There's a layer of ashes on our hearts...who knows what we were like before the fire went out. Not a trace is left to tell...The words are forgotten, the letters are destroyed, the emotions have faded. Here we sit like two ghosts on our own graves."