Sentence No. 110 · 15 July 2026
Left to herself for the evening she sat a while under the lamp, her hands empty, her usual avocations unheeded.
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James — The Portrait of a Lady (1881) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
Notice the two trailing fragments after the main clause, each beginning with 'her' and ending in a participle or adjective ('empty', 'unheeded'). These parallel absolute phrases sit at the end, painting the scene — when you see twin 'her ___' fragments, they belong together at the close.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 7 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A young woman sits alone after an unsettling visit, her thoughts turning inward. 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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