Both Uses of
ephemeral
in
The House of Mirth
- Her beauty itself was not the mere ephemeral possession it might have been in the hands of inexperience: her skill in enhancing it, the care she took of it, the use she made of it, seemed to give it a kind of permanence.
Chpt 1.4 *ephemeral = lasting only for a short time
- That was the feeling which possessed her now—the feeling of being something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could cling before the awful flood submerged them.†
Chpt 2.13
Definition:
-
(ephemeral) existing only for a short time