Roman Fever

Edith Wharton in her story Roman Fever, describes a conversation between two women, Mrs. Grace Ansley and Mrs. Alida Slade, who used to be friends, and "run across each other in Rome, at the same hotel." "Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley had lived opposite each other—actually as well as figuratively—for years," both marrying and having children of their own, losing touch with their friendship and growing older apart.

After reconnecting, "these two ladies visualized each other, each through the wrong end of her little telescope." Their reconnection is awkward, like being at a high school reunion, where you haven't seen each other for a while, and know nothing about what the person has been doing since then. It's hard to visualize your friends having a life without you, when this person used to be a close confidant and you still picture them as their unchanged childhood selves.

"For a long time they continued to sit side by side without speaking" and "Mrs. Ansley was slightly embarrassed by what seemed, after so many years, a new stage in their intimacy, and one with which she did not yet know how to deal." If someone is not around their friends for a while, you lose common interests and the ability to relate. It does make it hard to converse and relate to someone about the present, which is why people are so nostalgic.

When they talk to each other they talk about "bridge games" and their daughter's lives, and their past together, revealing their friendship ended over fighting over Delphin Slade. Mrs. Ansley's revelation about her daughter Barbara proves that sometimes the past isn't worth being brought up, in response to Mrs. Slade saying " I had everything; I had him for twenty-five years. And you had nothing but that one letter that he didn't write." Sometimes it is best to just let the past die.