Sentence No. 11 · 7 April 2026
What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton — The Age of Innocence (1920) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The sentence balances two parallel halves: it was his duty to conceal his past, and hers to have no past to conceal. The lone word “hers” carries an understood “duty” — recognising that shared noun tells you the two halves belong together.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 7 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. Newland Archer watches a strange young woman at the opera and feels his comfortable certainties beginning to shift. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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