Well this is a supremely depressing little novella! It's written by Edith Wharton, though, so I should have known. But it's everything that I enjoy about novella form: a deceptively simple story and a ruthless focus on characterisation, all without a line of waffle. The ending is terrible - by which I mean it is almost too awful to contemplate. Death would have been better, and all that's left is three people, sharing misery and deprivation, because duty and poverty and utter hopelessness have left them no other way out. Even suicide has failed them. As I said, it's terrible, but it's also this polished little portrait of the utter degradation of loneliness.