How could he not have realized that their bodies had melded into one flesh? How could he have not seen that they shared a single spirit? That the lines and curves of their bodies meshed perfectly, that each breath they took seemed to emanate from a single being. In the throes of passion, Newland and May seemed to understand each other perfectly. Their lovemaking transported them to paradise. So how could Newland not have recognized that he was deeply in love with his wife, not the Countess?

When May crested that day, Newland remembered her singing out with joy. “Oh Newland, I do love you so.” He would replay those words in his mind forever.

As Newland walked along, finally able to dismiss the Countess from his mind, he returned to that day with May in the gardens. It was the most perfect day of his life. There was nothing he could not remember about it now. There was a light breeze, warmed by the bright morning sun. The air itself was intoxicating, as it was filled with the fragrance of the roses blending with the lilacs and gardenia. And as he made sweet, heavenly love to May, he recalled that a mourning dove had roosted above them. It was only feet away and he remembered how the bird called for his lover, his plea insistent and everlasting. When his mate finally returned a coo from across the pond, the bird swiftly alighted and glided through the open space to find his mate’s branch.

How had Newland forgotten this perfect day until now? How had he failed to recognize the passion that he had found with May on that glorious day and on so many other days that he had diminished in favor of pure fantasy? Now, too late to tell May how he felt, that day in the garden would remain etched in his brain as the most romantic day of his life. Newland thought of the mourning doves again. He marveled at how two creatures could mate for life, could remain loyal to one another, even after death claimed the first of them. No matter that it was some inexplicable force of nature that caused the bond—it was wondrous.

About The Authors

Coco Rousseau

After successfully adapting E. M. Forster’s A Room With a View to explore that novel’s erotic potential, Coco decided she would continue her passion for retelling classic love stories on a more intimate level by adapting an American classic.

Edith Wharton

In 1921, Edith Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her twelfth book, The Age of Innocence. A remarkable chronicle of an important period in American history, the story portrays the public and private lives of the upper class in nineteenth-century New York. Wharton creates a tragic, poignant love story among Newland Archer, an idealistic young lawyer, May, his society-conscious wife, and the Countess Olenska, a beautiful, mysterious woman with a scandalous past. In Coco’s adaptation of the timeless classic, the plot takes on a new twist, while also more explicitly exploring human passion and sexuality in ways that Wharton could not.