FIRST LINE REVIEW: "It is not often that youth allows itself to feel undividedly happy: the sensation is too much the result of selection and elimination to be within reach of the awakening clutch on life." Yeah, you have to read that sentence several times understand it, don't you? For me, that was the challenge of this novella. The writing was just a bit more dense that in the other pieces I've read by Wharton. And that made the final "pay off" at the end a bit more disappointing, as well.