Glennard dropped the Spectator and sat looking into the fire. The club was filling up, but he still had to himself the small inner room with its darkening outlook down the rain-streaked prospect of Fifth Avenue. It was all dull and dismal enough, yet a moment earlier his boredom had been perversely tinged by a sense of resentment at the thought that, as things were going, he might in time have to surrender even the despised privilege of boring himself within those particular four walls.

EDITH WHARTON, U.S.A., in The Touchstone, 1900


Glennard pôs de lado o Spectator e sentou-se a olhar o lume. O clube começava a encher, mas continuava a ter só para ele a salinha interior com a visão lá de baixo, cada vez mais escura, do cenário da Quinta Avenida varrida pela chuva. Era tudo bastante monótono e sombrio, mas ainda há instantes o seu enfado se eivara perversamente de uma sensação de revolta, à ideia de poder vir a ter, dado o actual estado de coisas, de renunciar ao privilégio menor de se aborrecer entre aquelas mesmas quatro paredes.