Working on collating (spoiler!) Lily’s last hours today was so powerful. I’ve read HM many times, but reading it this way is entirely different. Every bodily sensation of her sinking into the drug-induced sleep is described at what seems an agonizing length, yet EW keeps making changes: is the sense of “warmth & pleasure” or–as she finally decides, “drowsy peace”?

But Wharton’s handwriting is her “fast” handwriting, when she’s clearly on a roll & making few changes. The last paragraph has almost no changes, especially to the last lines: “the recovered warmth flowed through her, she yielded to it, sank into it, & slept.”