Read "The Mother's Recompense" by Edith Wharton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
She turned away from the Rectory and walked aimlessly up Madison / Avenue. It was a warm summer-coloured October day. At Fifty-ninth / Street she turned into the Park and wandered on over the yellowing / leaf-drifts of the ramble. In just such a state of blind bewilderment / she had followed those paths on the day when she had first caught sight / of Chris Fenno and Lilla Gates in the twilight ahead of her. That / was less than a year ago, and she looked back with amazement at the / effect which that chance encounter had had on her. She seemed hardly / to be suffering more now than she had suffered then. It had seemed / unbearable, impossible, at the moment, that Chris Fenno should enter, / even so episodically, so remotely, into her new life; and here he was, / ensconced in its very centre, in complete possession of it.
She tried to think the situation out; but, as always, her trembling / thoughts recoiled, just as she had seen Dr. Arklow's recoil.