The Mother's Recompense by Edith Wharton

Fantastic shapes of heavy leaf-shadows on blinding whiteness. Torrents / of blue and lilac and crimson foaming over the branches of unknown / trees. Azure distances, snow-peaks, silver reefs, and an unbroken glare / of dead-white sunshine merging into a moonlight hardly whiter. Was / there never any night, real, black, obliterating, in all these dazzling / latitudes in which two desperate women had sought refuge?

They had "travelled. " It had been very interesting; and Anne was / better. Certainly she was much better. They were on their way home / now, moving at a leisurely pace -- what was there to return for? -- from / one scene of gorgeous unreality to another. And all the while Anne / had never spoken -- never really spoken! She had simply, a day or two / after Mrs. Clephane's furtive trip to Baltimore, told her mother / that her engagement was broken: "by mutual agreement" were the stiff / old-fashioned words she used. As no one else, even among their nearest, / had been let into the secret of that fleeting bond, there was no one to / whom explanations were due; and the girl, her curt confidence to her / mother once made, had withdrawn instantly into the rigid reserve she / had maintained ever since. Just so, in former days, Kate Clephane had / seen old Mrs. Clephane meet calamity. After her favourite daughter's / death the old woman had never spoken her name. And thus with Anne; her / soul seemed to freeze about its secret. Even the physical resemblance / to old Mrs. Clephane reappeared, and with it a certain asperity of / speech, a sharp intolerance of trifles, breaking every now and again / upon long intervals of smiling apathy.