Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [1594]

Ahead of him, in the winter night, loomed a big unlit house. As he drew near he thought how often he had seen it blazing with lights, its steps awninged and carpeted, and carriages waiting in double line to draw up at the curb-stone. It was in the conservatory that stretched its dead-black bulk down the side street that he had taken his first kiss from May; it was under the myriad candles of the ball-room that he had seen her appear, tall and silver-shining as a young Diana. … Now the house was as dark as the grave, except for a faint flare of gas in the basement, and a light in one upstairs room where the blind had not been lowered. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 1594

Note

The darkened Beaufort house turns memory into architecture: the same space is lit in one paragraph and extinguished in the next, so that personal history and social disgrace are made visible in a single image of extinguished candles.