“It’s more real to me here than if I went
up,” he suddenly heard himself say; and the
fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose
its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes
succeeded each other.
He sat for a long time on the bench in the thickening
dusk, his eyes never turning from the balcony.
At length a light shone through the windows, and
a moment later a man-servant came out on the balcony,
drew up the awnings, and closed the shutters.
At that, as if it had been the signal he waited for,
Newland Archer got up slowly and walked back alone
to his hotel.
The Age of Innocence first appeared in four large
installments in The Pictorial Review, from July to
October 1920. It was published that same year
in book form by D. Appleton and Company in New York
and in London. Wharton made extensive stylistic,
punctuation, and spelling changes and revisions between
the serial and book publication, and more than thirty
subsequent changes were made after the second impression
of the book edition had been run off. This authoritative
text is reprinted from the Library of America edition
of Novels by Edith Wharton, and is based on the sixth
impression of the first edition, which incorporates
the last set of extensive revisions that are obviously
authorial.
