Wharton, Edith: Bunner Sisters, v.1, 4 Feb 2008.
 

A short novel, first published in two instalments in Scribner’s Magazine in 1916.

The title is ‘Bunner Sisters’ not ‘The Bunner Sisters’. I checked. It is the name of the shop that the sisters run.
The two Bunner sisters eke out a precarious existence in New York. The elder constantly makes sacrifices for the younger. How far should this go?

“Hitherto she had never thought of questioning the inherited principles which had guided her life. Self-effacement for the good of others had always seemed to her both natural and necessary; but then she had taken it for granted that it implied the securing of that good. Now she perceived that to refuse the gifts of life does not ensure their transmission to those for whom they have been surrendered; and her familiar heaven was unpeopled. She felt she could no longer trust in the goodness of God, and there was only a black abyss above the roof of Bunner Sisters”.

One of the stories from the following collection; all of which are available on Mobile Read as separate entries (the complete book is also available on Internet Archive/Open Library, but is not cleaned up as Patricia has done. Thank you again and always, Patricia!)

Xingu and Other Stories, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916
(Xingu, Coming Home, Autres Temps. . ., Kerfol, The Long Run, The Triumph of Night, The Choice, Bunner Sisters)