1961: Blake Nevius, Edith Wharton: A Study of Her Fiction, page 235 (University of California Press)When Frenside had left her Halo tried to collect her thoughts; but his visit had shaken her too deeply. He had roused her out of her self-imposed torpour into a state of hyper-acute sensibility, and detaching her from the plight in which she was entangled had compelled her to view it objectively.
1988: Peter Yapp, The Travellers’ Dictionary of Quotation: Who Said What, About Where?, page 428 (Taylor & Francis
ISBN 0415027608, 9780415027601)
The climate and country were such as to gratify every appetite for pleasureable sensation, without enervating or relaxing the frame, or allowing the mind to sink into an Asiatic torpour.
How could I describe, relate that sweetish discharge, half vanilla, half hen’s blood, the essence of fern sap and foul sweat, like my own sweat when I would touch myself and shiver, mouth and nostrils gaping wide, during certain nights of torpour, deep satisfaction and incomprehension, deep down in my bed?
