Sentence No. 139 · 13 August 2026
A delicate pathos perfumed her disconnected remarks, giving them unexpected beauty, just as in the decaying autumn woods there sometimes rise odours reminiscent of spring.
E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
E.M. Forster — A Room with a View (1908) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
This sentence pivots on a simile introduced by 'just as,' which always sets up a comparison that needs a main clause before it. Locate the comma before 'just as' and you've found the hinge between the observation and its poetic parallel.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 8 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A delicate old lady's kindly ramblings take on an unexpected loveliness. 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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