Sentence No. 16 · 12 April 2026
She had an immense curiosity about life and was constantly staring and wondering.
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
The paired verb phrase "was constantly staring and wondering" uses a coordinating conjunction to join two gerunds. When you see an "and" phrase linking two "-ing" words, they belong together at the end of the clause — neither opens the sentence.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 6 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. Isabel Archer, newly arrived in England, confronts for the first time what it might mean to be truly free. 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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