Adventures with Edith, Book I, Chapter 13. This is the scene in which Gus Trenor has trapped Lily in his otherwise-empty house, and it is even more scary in the MS version, though that may be an artifact of the slow reading necessary for this part. Wharton rewrote this twice (manuscript with changes and typescript/manuscript with changes), with lots of crossouts, pasted-together strips, and alternate text on the backs.

I hadn’t fully appreciated before how much stagecraft Wharton puts into this scene: the drunken & angry Gus moves a chair in front of Lily and plops himself down in it, blocking her exit. He creeps up on her “with a hand that grew formidable.” And instead of making Lily “hear him out” as in the book, he’s now got what he wanted (Lily alone) and means “to make the most of it.”

In her anger, Lily had earlier made a satiric jab at Gus’s intelligence, and this calls forth the “primitive man from his lair.” She’s talked her way out of these situations before with wit, but now Lily’s terrified, frozen in place, afraid of the “mustering of vulture tongues” (just “tongues” in the book) if she calls for help.

As I was working on this part today, this scene reminded me of what Margaret Atwood said: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”