Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton

The snow lay so deep outside the bungalow that Vance had had to interrupt his work (he seemed to be always interrupting it nowadays) to clear a path from the door to the lane. The shovelling of heavy masses of frozen snow put a strain on muscles relaxed by long hours at his desk, and he stood still in the glittering winter sunshine, leaning on his shovel, while the cold and the hard exercise worked like a drug in his brain.

Weeks had gone by since his last visit to New York. He had not returned there since the evening of the Beethoven concert. His talk with his friends at the Cocoanut Tree and his long evening of musical intoxication had set his imagination working, and he had come home as from an adventure in far countries, laden with treasure to be transmuted into the flesh and blood of his creations. He had often noticed how small a spark of experience or emotion sufficed to provoke these explosions of activity, and with his booty in his breast he hurried back to his solitude as impatiently as he had left it.