Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [1158]

Archer was dealing hurriedly with crowding thoughts. His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen. He glanced about him at the unpruned garden, the tumble-down house, and the oak-grove under which the dusk was gathering. It had seemed so exactly the place in which he ought to have found Madame Olenska; and she was far away, and even the pink sunshade was not hers … — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 1158

Note

The deflation is precise: the future unrolled as an endless emptiness, the ‘dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.’ That formulation reverses the usual vision — it’s not events towering over him but his own figure shrinking in a void. The last clause, ‘even the pink sunshade was not hers,’ lands the small cruelty of the coincidence.