THE LONG RUN By Edith Wharton Copyright, 1916, By Charles Scribner's Sons _The shade of those our days that had no tongue. _ I It was last winter, after a twelve years' absence from New York, thatI saw again, at one of the Jim Cumnors' dinners, my old friend HalstonMerrick. The Cumnors' house is one of the few where, even after such a lapseof time, one can be sure of finding familiar faces and picking up oldthreads; where for a moment one can abandon one's self to the illusionthat New York humanity is a shade less unstable than its bricks andmortar. And that evening in particular I remember feeling that therecould be no pleasanter way of re-entering the confused and carelessworld to which I was returning than through the quiet softly-litdiningroom in which Mrs. Cumnor, with a characteristic sense of myneeding to be broken in gradually, had contrived to assemble so manyfriendly faces. I was glad to see them all, including the three or four I did not know, or failed to recognize, but had no difficulty in passing as in thetradition and of the group; but I was most of all glad--as I ratherwonderingly found--to set eyes again on Halston Merrick. He and I had been at Harvard together, for one thing, and had sharedthere curiosities and ardours a little outside the current tendencies:had, on the whole, been more critical than our comrades, and lessamenable to the accepted. Then, for the next following years, Merrickhad been a vivid and promising figure in young American life. Handsome, careless, and free, he had wandered and tasted and compared. Afterleaving Harvard he had spent two years at Oxford; then he had accepteda private secretaryship to our Ambassador in England, and had come backfrom this adventure with a fresh curiosity about public affairs at home, and the conviction that men of his kind should play a larger part inthem. This led, first, to his running for a State Senatorship which hefailed to get, and ultimately to a few months of intelligent activity ina municipal office. Soon after being deprived of this post by a changeof party he had published a small volume of delicate verse, and, a yearlater, an odd uneven brilliant book on Municipal Government. After thatone hardly knew where to look for his next appearance; but chance ratherdisappointingly solved the problem by killing off his father and placingHalston at the head of the Merrick Iron Foundry at Yonkers. His friends had gathered that, whenever this regrettable contingencyshould occur, he meant to dispose of the business and continue his lifeof free experiment. As often happens in just such cases, however, it wasnot the moment for a sale, and Merrick had to take over the managementof the foundry. Some two years later he had a chance to free himself;but when it came he did not choose to take it. This tame sequel to aninspiriting start was disappointing to some of us, and I was among thosedisposed to regret Merrick's drop to the level of the prosperous. ThenI went away to a big engineering job in China, and from there to Africa, and spent the next twelve years out of sight and sound of New Yorkdoings. During that long interval I heard of no new phase in Merrick'sevolution, but this did not surprise me, as I had never expected fromhim actions resonant enough to cross the globe. All I knew--and this didsurprise me--was that he had not married, and that he was still in theiron business. All through those years, however, I never ceased to wish, in certain situations and at certain turns of thought, that Merrick werein reach, that I could tell this or that to Merrick. I had never, in theinterval, found any one with just his quickness of perception and justhis sureness of response. After dinner, therefore, we irresistibly drew together. In Mrs. Cumnor'sbig easy drawing-room cigars were allowed, and there was no break in thecommunion of the sexes; and, this being the case, I ought to have soughta seat beside one of the ladies among whom we were allowed to remain. But, as had generally happened of old when Merrick was in sight, I foundmyself steering straight for him past all minor ports of call. There had been no time, before dinner, for more than the barestexpression of satisfaction at meeting, and our seats had been atopposite ends of the longish table, so that we got our first real lookat each other in the secluded corner to which Mrs. Cumnor's vigilancenow directed us. Merrick was still handsome in his stooping tawny way: handsomer perhaps, with thinnish hair and more lines in his face, than in the young excessof his good looks. He was very glad to see me and conveyed his gladnessby the same charming smile; but as soon as we began to talk I felta change. It was not merely the change that years and experience andaltered values bring. There was something more fundamental the matterwith Merrick, something dreadful, unforeseen, unaccountable: Merrick hadgrown conventional and dull. In the glow of his frank pleasure in seeing me I was ashamed to analyzethe nature of the change; but presently our talk began to flag--fancy atalk with Merrick flagging!--and self-deception became impossible as Iwatched myself handing out platitudes with the gesture of the salesmanoffering something to a purchaser "equally good. " The worst of it wasthat Merrick--Merrick, who had once felt everything!--didn't seem tofeel the lack of spontaneity in my remarks, but hung on' them with aharrowing faith in the resuscitating power of our past. It was as if hehugged the empty vessel of our friendship without perceiving that thelast drop of its essence was dry. But after all, I am exaggerating. Through my surprise and disappointmentI felt a certain sense of well-being in the mere physical presence of myold friend. I liked looking at the way his dark hair waved away fromthe forehead, at the tautness of his dry brown cheek, the thoughtfulbackward tilt of his head, the way his brown eyes mused upon thescene through lowered lids. All the past was in his way of looking andsitting, and I wanted to stay near him, and felt that he wanted meto stay; but the devil of it was that neither of us knew what to talkabout. It was this difficulty which caused me, after a while, since I could notfollow Merrick's talk, to follow his eyes in their roaming circuit ofthe room. At the moment when our glances joined, his had paused on a ladyseated at some distance from our corner. Immersed, at first, in thesatisfaction of finding myself again with Merrick, I had been only halfaware of this lady, as of one of the few persons present whom I did notknow, or had failed to remember. There was nothing in her appearance tochallenge my attention or to excite my curiosity, and I don't suppose Ishould have looked at her again if I had not noticed that my friend wasdoing so. She was a woman of about forty-seven, with fair faded hair and a youngfigure. Her gray dress was handsome but ineffective, and her pale andrather serious face wore a small unvarying smile which might havebeen pinned on with her ornaments. She was one of the women in whomincreasing years show rather what they have taken than what they havebestowed, and only on looking closely did one see that what they hadtaken must have been good of its kind. Phil Cumnor and another man were talking to her, and the very intensityof the attention she bestowed on them betrayed the straining ofrebellious thoughts. She never let her eyes stray or her smile drop; andat the proper moment I saw she was ready with the proper sentiment. The party, like most of those that Mrs. Cumnor gathered about her, wasnot composed of exceptional beings. The people of the old vanishedNew York set were not exceptional: they were mostly cut on the sameconvenient and unobtrusive pattern; but they were often exceedingly"nice. " And this obsolete quality marked every look and gesture of thelady I was scrutinizing. While these reflections were passing through my mind I was aware thatMerrick's eyes rested still on her. I took a cross-section of his lookand found in it neither surprise nor absorption, but only a certainsober pleasure just about at the emotional level of the rest of theroom. If he continued to look at her, his expression seemed to say, it wasonly because, all things considered, there were fewer reasons forlooking at anybody else. This made me wonder what were the reasons for looking at _her_; and asa first step toward enlightenment I said:--"I'm sure I've seen the ladyover there in gray--" Merrick detached his eyes and turned them on me with a wondering look. "Seen her? You know her. " He waited. "_Don't_ you know her? It's Mrs. Reardon. " I wondered that he should wonder, for I could not remember, inthe Cumnor group or elsewhere, having known any one of the name hementioned. "But perhaps, " he continued, "you hadn't heard of her marriage? You knewher as Mrs. Trant. " I gave him back his stare. "Not Mrs. Philip Trant?" "Yes; Mrs. Philip Trant. " "Not Paulina?" "Yes--Paulina, " he said, with a just perceptible delay before the name. In my surprise I continued to stare at him. He averted his eyes frommine after a moment, and I saw that they had strayed back to her. "Youfind her so changed?" he asked. Something in his voice acted as a warning signal, and I tried to reducemy astonishment to less unbecoming proportions. "I don't find that shelooks much older. " "No. Only different?" he suggested, as if there were nothing new to himin my perplexity. "Yes--awfully different. " "I suppose we're all awfully different. To you, I mean--coming from sofar?" "I recognized all the rest of you, " I said, hesitating. "And she used tobe the one who stood out most. " There was a flash, a wave, a stir of something deep down in his eyes. "Yes, " he said. "_That's_ the difference. " "I see it is. She--she looks worn down. Soft but blurred, like thefigures in that tapestry behind her. " He glanced at her again, as if to test the exactness of my analogy. "Life wears everybody down, " he said. "Yes--except those it makes more distinct. They're the rare ones, ofcourse; but she _was_ rare. " He stood up suddenly, looking old and tired. "I believe I'll be off. Iwish you'd come down to my place for Sunday.... No, don't shake hands--Iwant to slide away unawares. " He had backed away to the threshold and was turning the noiselessdoor-knob. Even Mrs. Cumnor's doorknobs had tact and didn't tell. "Of course I'll come, " I promised warmly. In the last ten minutes he hadbegun to interest me again. "All right Good-bye. " Half through the door he paused to add:--"_She_remembers you. You ought to speak to her. " "I'm going to. But tell me a little more. " I thought I saw a shadeof constraint on his face, and did not add, as I had meant to: "Tellme--because she interests me--what wore her down?" Instead, I asked:"How soon after Trant's death did she remarry?" He seemed to make an effort of memory. "It was seven years ago, Ithink. " "And is Reardon here to-night?" "Yes; over there, talking to Mrs. Cumnor. " I looked across the broken groupings and saw a large glossy man withstraw-coloured hair and a red face, whose shirt and shoes and complexionseemed all to have received a coat of the same expensive varnish. As I looked there was a drop in the talk about us, and I heard Mr. Reardon pronounce in a big booming voice: "What I say is: what's thegood of disturbing things? Thank the Lord, I'm content with what I'vegot!" "Is _that_ her husband? What's he like?" "Oh, the best fellow in the world, " said Merrick, going. II Merrick had a little place at Riverdale, where he went occasionally tobe near the Iron Works, and where he hid his week-ends when the worldwas too much with him. Here, on the following Saturday afternoon I found him awaiting me in apleasant setting of books and prints and faded parental furniture. We dined late, and smoked and talked afterward in his book-walled studytill the terrier on the hearth-rug stood up and yawned for bed. Whenwe took the hint and moved toward the staircase I felt, not that Ihad found the old Merrick again, but that I was on his track, had comeacross traces of his passage here and there in the thick jungle that hadgrown up between us. But I had a feeling that when I finally came on theman himself he might be dead.... As we started upstairs he turned back with one of his abrupt shymovements, and walked into the study. "Wait a bit!" he called to me. I waited, and he came out in a moment carrying a limp folio. "It's typewritten. Will you take a look at it? I've been trying to getto work again, " he explained, thrusting the manuscript into my hand. "What? Poetry, I hope?" I exclaimed. He shook his head with a gleam of derision. "No--just generalconsiderations. The fruit of fifty years of inexperience. " He showed me to my room and said good-night. ***** The following afternoon we took a long walk inland, across the hills, and I said to Merrick what I could of his book. Unluckily there wasn'tmuch to say. The essays were judicious, polished and cultivated; butthey lacked the freshness and audacity of his youthful work. I triedto conceal my opinion behind the usual generalisations, but he brokethrough these feints with a quick thrust to the heart of my meaning. "It's worn down--blurred? Like the figures in the Cumnors' tapestry?" I hesitated. "It's a little too damned resigned, " I said. "Ah, " he exclaimed, "so am I. Resigned. " He switched the bare bramblesby the roadside. "A man can't serve two masters. " "You mean business and literature?" "No; I mean theory and instinct. The gray tree and the green. You'vegot to choose which fruit you'll try; and you don't know till afterwardwhich of the two has the dead core. " "How can anybody be sure that only one of them has?" "I'm sure, " said Merrick sharply. We turned back to the subject of his essays, and I was astonished atthe detachment with which he criticised and demolished them. Little bylittle, as we talked, his old perspective, his old standards cameback to him; but with the difference that they no longer seemed likefunctions of his mind but merely like attitudes assumed or dropped atwill. He could still, with an effort, put himself at the angle fromwhich he had formerly seen things; but it was with the effort of a manclimbing mountains after a sedentary life in the plain. I tried to cut the talk short, but he kept coming back to it withnervous insistence, forcing me into the last retrenchments of hypocrisy, and anticipating the verdict I held back. I perceived that a greatdeal--immensely more than I could see a reason for--had hung for him onmy opinion of his book. Then, as suddenly, his insistence dropped and, as if ashamed of havingforced, himself so long on my attention, he began to talk rapidly anduninterestingly of other things. We were alone again that evening, and after dinner, wishing to effacethe impression of the afternoon, and above all to show that I wanted himto talk about himself, I reverted to his work. "You must need an outletof that sort. When a man's once had it in him, as you have--and whenother things begin to dwindle--" He laughed. "Your theory is that a man ought to be able to return to theMuse as he comes back to his wife after he's ceased to interest otherwomen?" "No; as he comes back to his wife after the day's work is done. " A newthought came to me as I looked at him. "You ought to have had one, " Iadded. He laughed again. "A wife, you mean? So that there'd have been some onewaiting for me even if the Muse decamped?" He went on after a pause:"I've a notion that the kind of woman worth coming back to wouldn'tbe much more patient than the Muse. But as it happens I nevertried--because, for fear they'd chuck me, I put them both out of doorstogether. " He turned his head and looked past me with a queer expression at the lowpanelled door at my back. "Out of that very door they went--the two of'em, on a rainy night like this: and one stopped and looked back, to seeif I wasn't going to call her--and I didn't--and so they both went.... " III "The Muse?" (said Merrick, refilling my glass and stooping to pat theterrier as he went back to his chair)--"well, you've met the Muse in thelittle volume of sonnets you used to like; and you've met the woman too, and you used to like _her_; though you didn't know her when you saw herthe other evening.... "No, I won't ask you how she struck you when you talked to her: I know. She struck you like that stuff I gave you to read last night She'sconformed--I've conformed--the mills have caught us and ground us:ground us, oh, exceedingly small! "But you remember what she was; and that's the reason why I'm tellingyou this now.... "You may recall that after my father's death I tried to sell the Works. I was impatient to free myself from anything that would keep me tied toNew York. I don't dislike my trade, and I've made, in the end, a fairlygood thing of it; but industrialism was not, at that time, in the lineof my tastes, and I know now that it wasn't what I was meant for. Above all, I wanted to get away, to see new places and rub up againstdifferent ideas. I had reached a time of life--the top of the firsthill, so to speak--where the distance draws one, and everything in theforeground seems tame and stale. I was sick to death of the particularset of conformities I had grown up among; sick of being a pleasantpopular young man with a long line of dinners on my list, and the deadcertainty of meeting the same people, or their prototypes, at all ofthem. "Well--I failed to sell the Works, and that increased my discontent. I went through moods of cold unsociability, alternating with suddenflushes of curiosity, when I gloated over stray scraps of talk overheardin railway stations and omnibuses, when strange faces that I passed inthe street tantalized me with fugitive promises. I wanted to be amongthings that were unexpected and unknown; and it seemed to me that nobodyabout me understood in the least what I felt, but that somewhere justout of reach there was some one who _did_, and whom I must find ordespair.... "It was just then that, one evening, I saw Mrs. Trant for the firsttime. "Yes: I know--you wonder what I mean. I'd known her, of course, as agirl; I'd met her several times after her marriage; and I'd lately beenthrown with her, quite intimately and continuously, during a successionof country-house visits. But I had never, as it happened, really _seen_her.... "It was at a dinner at the Cumnors'; and there she was, in front of thevery tapestry we saw her against the other evening, with people abouther, and her face turned from me, and nothing noticeable or differentin her dress or manner; and suddenly she stood out for me against thefamiliar unimportant background, and for the first time I saw a meaningin the stale phrase of a picture's walking out of its frame. For, after all, most people _are_ just that to us: pictures, furniture, theinanimate accessories of our little island-area of sensation. And thensometimes one of these graven images moves and throws out live filamentstoward us, and the line they make draws us across the world as themoon-track seems to draw a boat across the water.... "There she stood; and as this queer sensation came over me I feltthat she was looking steadily at me, that her eyes were voluntarily, consciously resting on me with the weight of the very question I wasasking. "I went over and joined her, and she turned and walked with me into themusic-room. Earlier in the evening some one had been singing, andthere were low lights there, and a few couples still sitting in thoseconfidential corners of which Mrs. Cumnor has the art; but we were underno illusion as to the nature of these presences. We knew that they werejust painted in, and that the whole of life was in us two, flowing backand forward between us. We talked, of course; we had the attitudes, eventhe words, of the others: I remember her telling me her plans for thespring and asking me politely about mine! As if there were the leastsense in plans, now that this thing had happened! "When we went back into the drawing-room I had said nothing to her thatI might not have said to any other woman of the party; but when we shookhands I knew we should meet the next day--and the next.... "That's the way, I take it, that Nature has arranged the beginning ofthe great enduring loves; and likewise of the little epidermal flurries. And how is a man to know where he is going? "From the first my feeling for Paulina Trant seemed to me a gravebusiness; but then the Enemy is given to producing that illusion. Manya man--I'm talking of the kind with imagination--has thought he wasseeking a soul when all he wanted was a closer view of its tenement. AndI tried--honestly tried--to make myself think I was in the latter case. Because, in the first place, I didn't, just then, want a big disturbinginfluence in my life; and because I didn't want to be a dupe; andbecause Paulina Trant was not, according to hearsay, the kind of womanfor whom it was worth while to bring up the big batteries.... "But my resistance was only half-hearted. What I really felt--_all_ Ireally felt--was the flood of joy that comes of heightened emotion. Shehad given me that, and I wanted her to give it to me again. That's asnear as I've ever come to analyzing my state in the beginning. "I knew her story, as no doubt you know it: the current version, Imean. She had been poor and fond of enjoyment, and she had married thatpompous stick Philip Trant because she needed a home, and perhaps alsobecause she wanted a little luxury. Queer how we sneer at women forwanting the thing that gives them half their attraction! "People shook their heads over the marriage, and divided, prematurely, into Philip's partisans and hers: for no one thought it would work. And they were almost disappointed when, after all, it did. She and herwooden consort seemed to get on well enough. There was a ripple, at onetime, over her friendship with young Jim Dalham, who was always with herduring a summer at Newport and an autumn in Italy; then the talk diedout, and she and Trant were seen together, as before, on terms ofapparent good-fellowship. "This was the more surprising because, from the first, Paulina had nevermade the least attempt to change her tone or subdue her colours. In thegray Trant atmosphere she flashed with prismatic fires. She smoked, shetalked subversively, she did as she liked and went where she chose, anddanced over the Trant prejudices and the Trant principles as if they'dbeen a ball-room floor; and all without apparent offence to her solemnhusband and his cloud of cousins. I believe her frankness and directnessstruck them dumb. She moved like a kind of primitive Una through thevirtuous rout, and never got a finger-mark on her freshness. "One of the finest things about her was the fact that she never, for aninstant, used her situation as a means of enhancing her attraction. Witha husband like Trant it would have been so easy! He was a man who alwayssaw the small sides of big things. He thought most of life compressibleinto a set of by-laws and the rest unmentionable; and with his stifffrock-coated and tall-hatted mind, instinctively distrustful ofintelligences in another dress, with his arbitrary classification ofwhatever he didn't understand into 'the kind of thing I don't approveof, ' 'the kind of thing that isn't done, ' and--deepest depth ofall--'the kind of thing I'd rather not discuss, ' he lived in bondage toa shadowy moral etiquette of which the complex rites and awful penaltieshad cast an abiding gloom upon his manner. "A woman like his wife couldn't have asked a better foil; yet I'm sureshe never consciously used his dullness to relieve her brilliancy. Shemay have felt that the case spoke for itself. But I believe her reservewas rather due to a lively sense of justice, and to the rare habit (yousaid she was rare) of looking at facts as they are, without any throwingof sentimental lime-lights. She knew Trant could no more help beingTrant than she could help being herself--and there was an end of it. I've never known a woman who 'made up' so little mentally.... "Perhaps her very reserve, the fierceness of her implicit rejection ofsympathy, exposed her the more to--well, to what happened when we met. She said afterward that it was like having been shut up for months inthe hold of a ship, and coming suddenly on deck on a day that was allflying blue and silver.... "I won't try to tell you what she was. It's easier to tell you what herfriendship made of me; and I can do that best by adopting her metaphorof the ship. Haven't you, sometimes, at the moment of starting on ajourney, some glorious plunge into the unknown, been tripped up by thethought: 'If only one hadn't to come back'? Well, with her one had thesense that one would never have to come back; that the magic ship, wouldalways carry one farther. And what an air one breathed on it! And, oh, the wind, and the islands, and the sunsets! "I said just now 'her friendship'; and I used the word advisedly. Loveis deeper than friendship, but friendship is a good deal wider. Thebeauty of our relation was that it included both dimensions. Ourthoughts met as naturally as our eyes: it was almost as if we loved eachother because we liked each other. The quality of a love may be testedby the amount of friendship it contains, and in our case there was nodividing line between loving and liking, no disproportion between them, no barrier against which desire beat in vain or from which thought fellback unsatisfied. Ours was a robust passion that could give an open-eyedaccount of itself, and not a beautiful madness shrinking away from theproof.... "For the first months friendship sufficed us, or rather gave us so muchby the way that we were in no hurry to reach what we knew it wasleading to. But we were moving there nevertheless, and one day we foundourselves on the borders. It came about through a sudden decision ofTrant's to start on a long tour with his wife. We had never foreseenthat: he seemed rooted in his New York habits and convinced that thewhole social and financial machinery of the metropolis would cease tofunction if he did not keep an eye on it through the columns of hismorning paper, and pronounce judgment on it in the afternoon at hisclub. But something new had happened to him: he caught a cold, which wasfollowed by a touch of pleurisy, and instantly he perceived the intenseinterest and importance which ill-health may add to life. He took thefullest advantage of it. A discerning doctor recommended travel in awarm climate; and suddenly, the morning paper, the afternoon club, FifthAvenue, Wall Street, all the complex phenomena of the metropolis, fadedinto insignificance, and the rest of the terrestrial globe, from beinga mere geographical hypothesis, useful in enabling one to determine thelatitude of New York, acquired reality and magnitude as a factor in theconvalescence of Mr. Philip Trant. "His wife was absorbed in preparations for the journey. To move himwas like mobilizing an army, and weeks before the date set for theirdeparture it was almost as if she were already gone. "This foretaste of separation showed us what we were to each other. YetI was letting her go--and there was no help for it, no way of preventingit. Resistance was as useless as the vain struggles in a nightmare. Shewas Trant's and not mine: part of his luggage when he travelled as shewas part of his household furniture when he stayed at home.... "The day she told me that their passages were taken--it was on aNovember afternoon, in her drawing-room in town--I turned away from herand, going to the window, stood looking out at the torrent of trafficinterminably pouring down Fifth Avenue. I watched the senselessmachinery of life revolving in the rain and mud, and tried to picturemyself performing my small function in it after she had gone from me. "'It can't be--it can't be!' I exclaimed. "'What can't be?' "I came back into the room and sat down by her. 'This--this--' I hadn'tany words. 'Two weeks!' I said. 'What's two weeks?" "She answered, vaguely, something about their thinking of Spain for thespring-- "'Two weeks--two weeks!' I repeated. 'And the months we've lost--thedays that belonged to us!' "'Yes, ' she said, 'I'm thankful it's settled. ' "Our words seemed irrelevant, haphazard. It was as if each wereanswering a secret voice, and not what the other was saying. "'Don't you _feel_ anything at all?' I remember bursting out at her. As I asked it the tears were streaming down her face. I felt angry withher, and was almost glad to note that her lids were red and that shedidn't cry becomingly. I can't express my sensation to you exceptby saying that she seemed part of life's huge league against me. Andsuddenly I thought of an afternoon we had spent together in the country, on a ferny hill-side, when we had sat under a beech-tree, and her handhad lain palm upward in the moss, close to mine, and I had watched alittle black-and-red beetle creeping over it.... "The bell rang, and we heard the voice of a visitor and the click of anumbrella in the umbrella-stand. "She rose to go into the inner drawing-room, and I caught her suddenlyby the wrist. 'You understand, ' I said, 'that we can't go on like this?' "'I understand, ' she answered, and moved away to meet her visitor. As Iwent out I heard her saying in the other room: 'Yes, we're really off onthe twelfth. '" IV "I wrote her a long letter that night, and waited two days for a reply. "On the third day I had a brief line saying that she was going to spendSunday with some friends who had a place near Riverdale, and that shewould arrange to see me while she was there. That was all. "It was on a Saturday that I received the note and I came out here thesame night. The next morning was rainy, and I was in despair, for I hadcounted on her asking me to take her for a drive or a long walk. It washopeless to try to say what I had to say to her in the drawing-room of acrowded country-house. And only eleven days were left! "I stayed indoors all the morning, fearing to go out lest she shouldtelephone me. But no sign came, and I grew more and more restless andanxious. She was too free and frank for coquetry, but her silence andevasiveness made me feel that, for some reason, she did not wish to hearwhat she knew I meant to say. Could it be that she was, after all, moreconventional, less genuine, than I had thought? I went again and againover the whole maddening round of conjecture; but the only conclusion Icould rest in was that, if she loved me as I loved her, she would be asdetermined as I was to let no obstacle come between us during the daysthat were left. "The luncheon-hour came and passed, and there was no word from her. Ihad ordered my trap to be ready, so that I might drive over as soon asshe summoned me; but the hours dragged on, the early twilight came, andI sat here in this very chair, or measured up and down, up and down, thelength of this very rug--and still there was no message and no letter. "It had grown quite dark, and I had ordered away, impatiently, theservant who came in with the lamps: I couldn't _bear_ any definite signthat the day was over! And I was standing there on the rug, staring atthe door, and noticing a bad crack in its panel, when I heard thesound of wheels on the gravel. A word at last, no doubt--a line toexplain.... I didn't seem to care much for her reasons, and I stoodwhere I was and continued to stare at the door. And suddenly it openedand she came in. "The servant followed her with a light, and then went out and closed thedoor. Her face looked pale in the lamplight, but her voice was as clearas a bell. "'Well, ' she said, 'you see I've come. ' "I started toward her with hands outstretched. 'You've come--you'vecome!' I stammered. "Yes; it was like her to come in that way--without dissimulation orexplanation or excuse. It was like her, if she gave at all, to give notfurtively or in haste, but openly, deliberately, without stintingthe measure or counting the cost. But her quietness and serenitydisconcerted me. She did not look like a woman who has yieldedimpetuously to an uncontrollable impulse. There was something almostsolemn in her face. "The effect of it stole over me as I looked at her, suddenly subduingthe huge flush of gratified longing. "'You're here, here, here!' I kept repeating, like a child singing overa happy word. "'You said, ' she continued, in her grave clear voice, 'that we couldn'tgo on as we were--' "'Ah, it's divine of you!' I held out my arms to her. "She didn't draw back from them, but her faint smile said, 'Wait, ' andlifting her hands she took the pins from her hat, and laid the hat onthe table. "As I saw her dear head bare in the lamp-light, with the thick hairwaving away from the parting, I forgot everything but the bliss andwonder of her being here--here, in my house, on my hearth--thatfourth rose from the corner of the rug is the exact spot where she wasstanding.... "I drew her to the fire, and made her sit down in the chair you're in, and knelt down by her, and hid my face on her knees. She put her hand onmy head, and I was happy to the depths of my soul. "'Oh, I forgot--' she exclaimed suddenly. I lifted my head and our eyesmet. Hers were smiling. "She reached out her hand, opened the little bag she had tossed downwith her hat, and drew a small object from it. 'I left my trunk at thestation. Here's the check. Can you send for it?' she asked. "Her trunk--she wanted me to send for her trunk! Oh, yes--I see yoursmile, your 'lucky man!' Only, you see, I didn't love her in that way. I knew she couldn't come to my house without running a big risk ofdiscovery, and my tenderness for her, my impulse to shield her, wasstronger, even then, than vanity or desire. Judged from the point ofview of those emotions I fell terribly short of my part. I hadn't anyof the proper feelings. Such an act of romantic folly was so unlike herthat it almost irritated me, and I found myself desperately wonderinghow I could get her to reconsider her plan without--well, withoutseeming to want her to. "It's not the way a novel hero feels; it's probably not the way a man inreal life ought to have felt. But it's the way I felt--and she saw it. "She put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me with deep, deepeyes. 'Then you didn't expect me to stay?' she asked. "I caught her hands and pressed them to me, stammering out that I hadn'tdared to dream.... "'You thought I'd come--just for an hour?' "'How could I dare think more? I adore you, you know, for whatyou've done! But it would be known if you--if you stayed on. Myservants--everybody about here knows you. I've no right to expose you tothe risk. ' She made no answer, and I went on tenderly: 'Give me, if youwill, the next few hours: there's a train that will get you to town bymidnight. And then we'll arrange something--in town--where it's saferfor you--more easily managed.... It's beautiful, it's heavenly of youto have come; but I love you too much--I must take care of you and thinkfor you--' "I don't suppose it ever took me so long to say so few words, andthough they were profoundly sincere they sounded unutterably shallow, irrelevant and grotesque. She made no effort to help me out, but satsilent, listening, with her meditative smile. 'It's my duty, dearest, asa man, ' I rambled on. The more I love you the more I'm bound--' "'Yes; but you don't understand, ' she interrupted. "She rose as she spoke, and I got up also, and we stood and looked ateach other. "'I haven't come for a night; if you want me I've come for always, ' shesaid. "Here again, if I give you an honest account of my feelings I shallwrite myself down as the poor-spirited creature I suppose I am. Therewasn't, I swear, at the moment, a grain of selfishness, of personalreluctance, in my feeling. I worshipped every hair of her head--when wewere together I was happy, when I was away from her something was gonefrom every good thing; but I had always looked on our love for eachother, our possible relation to each other, as such situations arelooked on in what is called society. I had supposed her, for all herfreedom and originality, to be just as tacitly subservient to that viewas I was: ready to take what she wanted on the terms on which societyconcedes such taking, and to pay for it by the usual restrictions, concealments and hypocrisies. In short, I supposed that she would 'playthe game'--look out for her own safety, and expect me to look out forit. It sounds cheap enough, put that way--but it's the rule we liveunder, all of us. And the amazement of finding her suddenly outside ofit, oblivious of it, unconscious of it, left me, for an awful minute, stammering at her like a graceless dolt.... Perhaps it wasn't even aminute; but in it she had gone the whole round of my thoughts. "'It's raining, ' she said, very low. 'I suppose you can telephone for atrap?' "There was no irony or resentment in her voice. She walked slowly acrossthe room and paused before the Brangwyn etching over there. 'That's agood impression. _Will_ you telephone, please?' she repeated. "I found my voice again, and with it the power of movement. I followedher and dropped at her feet. 'You can't go like this!' I cried. "She looked down on me from heights and heights. 'I can't stay likethis, ' she answered. "I stood up and we faced each other like antagonists. 'You don't know, 'I accused her passionately, 'in the least what you're asking me to askof you!' "'Yes, I do: _everything_, ' she breathed. "'And it's got to be that or nothing?' "'Oh, on both sides, ' she reminded me. "'_Not_ on both sides. It's not fair. That's why--' "'Why you won't?' "'Why I cannot--may not!' "'Why you'll take a night and not a life?' "The taunt, for a woman usually so sure of her aim, fell so short ofthe mark that its only effect was to increase my conviction of herhelplessness. The very intensity of my longing for her made me tremblewhere she was fearless. I had to protect her first, and think of my ownattitude afterward. "She was too discerning not to see this too. Her face softened, grewinexpressibly appealing, and she dropped again into that chair you'rein, leaned forward, and looked up with her grave smile. "'You think I'm beside myself--raving? (You're not thinking of yourself, I know. ) I'm not: I never was saner. Since I've known you I've oftenthought this might happen. This thing between us isn't an ordinarything. If it had been we shouldn't, all these months, have drifted. Weshould have wanted to skip to the last page--and then throw down thebook. We shouldn't have felt we could _trust_ the future as we did. Wewere in no hurry because we knew we shouldn't get tired; and when twopeople feel that about each other they must live together--or part. Idon't see what else they can do. A little trip along the coast won'tanswer. It's the high seas--or else being tied up to Lethe wharf. AndI'm for the high seas, my dear!' "Think of sitting here--here, in this room, in this chair--and listeningto that, and seeing the tight on her hair, and hearing the sound of hervoice! I don't suppose there ever was a scene just like it.... "She was astounding--inexhaustible; through all my anguish of resistanceI found a kind of fierce joy in following her. It was lucidity at whiteheat: the last sublimation of passion. She might have been an angelarguing a point in the empyrean if she hadn't been, so completely, awoman pleading for her life.... "Her life: that was the thing at stake! She couldn't do with less of itthan she was capable of; and a woman's life is inextricably part of theman's she cares for. "That was why, she argued, she couldn't accept the usual solution:couldn't enter into the only relation that society tolerates betweenpeople situated like ourselves. Yes: she knew all the arguments on_that_ side: didn't I suppose she'd been over them and over them? Sheknew (for hadn't she often said it of others?) what is said of the womanwho, by throwing in her lot with her lover's, binds him to a lifelongduty which has the irksomeness without the dignity of marriage. Oh, she could talk on that side with the best of them: only she asked me toconsider the other--the side of the man and woman who love each otherdeeply and completely enough to want their lives enlarged, and notdiminished, by their love. What, in such a case--she reasoned--must bethe inevitable effect of concealing, denying, disowning, the centralfact, the motive power of one's existence? She asked me to picture thecourse of such a love: first working as a fever in the blood, distortingand deflecting everything, making all other interests insipid, all otherduties irksome, and then, as the acknowledged claims of life regainedtheir hold, gradually dying--the poor starved passion!--for want of thewholesome necessary food of common living and doing, yet leaving lifeimpoverished by the loss of all it might have been. "'I'm not talking, dear--' I see her now, leaning toward me with shiningeyes: 'I'm not talking of the people who haven't enough to fill theirdays, and to whom a little mystery, a little manoeuvring, gives anillusion of importance that they can't afford to miss; I'm talking ofyou and me, with all our tastes and curiosities and activities; and Iask you what our love would become if we had to keep it apart from ourlives, like a pretty useless animal that we went to peep at and feedwith sweetmeats through its cage?' "I won't, my dear fellow, go into the other side of our strange duel:the arguments I used were those that most men in my situation wouldhave felt bound to use, and that most women in Paulina's acceptinstinctively, without even formulating them. The exceptionalness, thesignificance, of the case lay wholly in the fact that she had formulatedthem all and then rejected them.... "There was one point I didn't, of course, touch on; and that was thepopular conviction (which I confess I shared) that when a man and awoman agree to defy the world together the man really sacrifices muchmore than the woman. I was not even conscious of thinking of this at thetime, though it may have lurked somewhere in the shadow of my scruplesfor her; but she dragged it out into the daylight and held me face toface with it. "'Remember, I'm not attempting to lay down any general rule, ' sheinsisted; 'I'm not theorizing about Man and Woman, I'm talking about youand me. How do I know what's best for the woman in the next house? Verylikely she'll bolt when it would have been better for her to stay athome. And it's the same with the man: he'll probably do the wrong thing. It's generally the weak heads that commit follies, when it's the strongones that ought to: and my point is that you and I are both strongenough to behave like fools if we want to.... "'Take your own case first--because, in spite of the sentimentalists, it's the man who stands to lose most. You'll have to give up the IronWorks: which you don't much care about--because it won't be particularlyagreeable for us to live in New York: which you don't care much abouteither. But you won't be sacrificing what is called "a career. " You madeup your mind long ago that your best chance of self-development, andconsequently of general usefulness, lay in thinking rather than doing;and, when we first met, you were already planning to sell out yourbusiness, and travel and write. Well! Those ambitions are of a kindthat won't be harmed by your dropping out of your social setting. Onthe contrary, such work as you want to do ought to gain by it, because you'll be brought nearer to life-as-it-is, in contrast tolife-as-a-visiting-list.... ' "She threw back her head with a sudden laugh. 'And the joy of not havingany more visits to make! I wonder if you've ever thought of _that?_ Justat first, I mean; for society's getting so deplorably lax that, littleby little, it will edge up to us--you'll see! I don't want to idealizethe situation, dearest, and I won't conceal from you that in time weshall be called on. But, oh, the fun we shall have had in the interval!And then, for the first time we shall be able to dictate our own terms, one of which will be that no bores need apply. Think of being cured ofall one's chronic bores! We shall feel as jolly as people do after asuccessful operation. ' "I don't know why this nonsense sticks in my mind when some of thegraver things we said are less distinct. Perhaps it's because of acertain iridescent quality of feeling that made her gaiety seem likesunshine through a shower.... "'You ask me to think of myself?' she went on. 'But the beauty of ourbeing together will be that, for the first time, I shall dare to! NowI have to think of all the tedious trifles I can pack the days with, because I'm afraid--I'm afraid--to hear the voice of the real me, downbelow, in the windowless underground hole where I keep her.... "'Remember again, please, it's not Woman, it's Paulina Trant, I'm talking of. The woman in the next house may have all sorts ofreasons--honest reasons--for staying there. There may be some onethere who needs her badly: for whom the light would go out if she went. Whereas to Philip I've been simply--well, what New York was before hedecided to travel: the most important thing in life till he made up hismind to leave it; and now merely the starting-place of several lines ofsteamers. Oh, I didn't have to love you to know that! I only had to livewith _him_.... If he lost his eye-glasses he'd think it was the fault ofthe eye-glasses; he'd really feel that the eyeglasses had been careless. And he'd be convinced that no others would suit him quite as well. But at the optician's he'd probably be told that he needed something alittle different, and after that he'd feel that the old eye-glasses hadnever suited him at all, and that _that_ was their fault too.... ' "At one moment--but I don't recall when--I remember she stood up withone of her quick movements, and came toward me, holding out her arms. 'Oh, my dear, I'm pleading for my life; do you suppose I shall ever wantfor arguments?' she cried.... "After that, for a bit, nothing much remains with me except a sense ofdarkness and of conflict. The one spot of daylight in my whirling brainwas the conviction that I couldn't--whatever happened--profit by thesudden impulse she had acted on, and allow her to take, in a moment ofpassion, a decision that was to shape her whole life. I couldn't somuch as lift my little finger to keep her with me then, unless I wereprepared to accept for her as well as for myself the full consequencesof the future she had planned for us.... "Well--there's the point: I wasn't. I felt in her--poor fatuous idiotthat I was!--that lack of objective imagination which had always seemedto me to account, at least in part, for many of the so-called heroicqualities in women. When their feelings are involved they simply can'tlook ahead. Her unfaltering logic notwithstanding, I felt this aboutPaulina as I listened. She had a specious air of knowing where she wasgoing, but she didn't. She seemed the genius of logic and understanding, but the demon of illusion spoke through her lips.... "I said just now that I hadn't, at the outset, given my own side of thecase a thought. It would have been truer to say that I hadn't given it a_separate_ thought. But I couldn't think of her without seeing myself asa factor--the chief factor--in her problem, and without recognizing thatwhatever the experiment made of me, that it must fatally, in the end, make of her. If I couldn't carry the thing through she must breakdown with me: we should have to throw our separate selves intothe melting-pot of this mad adventure, and be 'one' in a terribleindissoluble completeness of which marriage is only an imperfectcounterpart.... "There could be no better proof of her extraordinary power over me, andof the way she had managed to clear the air of sentimental illusion, than the fact that I presently found myself putting this before her witha merciless precision of touch. "'If we love each other enough to do a thing like this, we must loveeach other enough to see just what it is we're going to do. ' "So I invited her to the dissecting-table, and I see now the fearlesseye with which she approached the cadaver. 'For that's what it is, youknow, ' she flashed out at me, at the end of my long demonstration. 'It'sa dead body, like all the instances and examples and hypothetical casesthat ever were! What do you expect to learn from thai? The first greatanatomist was the man who stuck his knife in a heart that was beating;and the only way to find out what doing a thing will be like is to doit!' "She looked away from me suddenly, as if she were fixing her eyes onsome vision on the outer rim of consciousness. 'No: there's one otherway, ' she exclaimed; 'and that is, _not_ to do it! To abstain andrefrain; and then see what we become, or what we don't become, inthe long run, and to draw our inferences. That's the game that almosteverybody about us is playing, I suppose; there's hardly one of the dullpeople one meets at dinner who hasn't had, just once, the chance of aberth on a ship that was off for the Happy Isles, and hasn't refused itfor fear of sticking on a sand-bank! "'I'm doing my best, you know, ' she continued, 'to see the sequel asyou see it, as you believe it's your duty to me to see it. I know theinstances you're thinking of: the listless couples wearing out theirlives in shabby watering places, and hanging on the favour of hotelacquaintances; or the proud quarrelling wretches shut up alone in a finehouse because they're too good for the only society they can get, andtrying to cheat their boredom by squabbling with their tradesmen andspying on their servants. No doubt there are such cases; but I don'trecognize either of us in those dismal figures. Why, to do it would beto admit that our life, yours and mine, is in the people about usand not in ourselves; that we're parasites and not self-sustainingcreatures; and that the lives we're leading now are so brilliant, fulland satisfying that what we should have to give up would surpass eventhe blessedness of being together!' "At that stage, I confess, the solid ground of my resistance began togive way under me. It was not that my convictions were shaken, but thatshe had swept me into a world whose laws were different, where one couldreach out in directions that the slave of gravity hasn't pictured. Butat the same time my opposition hardened from reason into instinct. Iknew it was her voice, and not her logic, that was unsettling me. I knewthat if she'd written out her thesis and sent it me by post I shouldhave made short work of it; and again the part of me which I calledby all the finest names: my chivalry, my unselfishness, my superiormasculine experience, cried out with one voice: 'You can't let a womanuse her graces to her own undoing--you can't, for her own sake, let hereyes convince you when her reasons don't!' "And then, abruptly, and for the first time, a doubt entered me: adoubt of her perfect moral honesty. I don't know how else to describemy feeling that she wasn't playing fair, that in coming to my house, inthrowing herself at my head (I called things by their names), shehad perhaps not so much obeyed an irresistible impulse as deeply, deliberately reckoned on the dissolvent effect of her generosity, herrashness and her beauty.... "From the moment that this mean doubt raised its head in me I was oncemore the creature of all the conventional scruples: I was repeating, before the looking-glass of my self-consciousness, all the stereotypedgestures of the 'man of honour. '... Oh, the sorry figure I must havecut! You'll understand my dropping the curtain on it as quickly as Ican.... "Yet I remember, as I made my point, being struck by its impressiveness. I was suffering and enjoying my own suffering. I told her that, whateverstep we decided to take, I owed it to her to insist on its being takensoberly, deliberately-- "('No: it's "advisedly, " isn't it? Oh, I was thinking of the MarriageService, ' she interposed with a faint laugh. ) "--that if I accepted, there, on the spot, her headlong beautiful giftof herself, I should feel I had taken an unfair advantage of her, anadvantage which she would be justified in reproaching me with afterward;that I was not afraid to tell her this because she was intelligentenough to know that my scruples were the surest proof of the quality ofmy love; that I refused to owe my happiness to an unconsidered impulse;that we must see each other again, in her own house, in less agitatingcircumstances, when she had had time to reflect on my words, to studyher heart and look into the future.... "The factitious exhilaration produced by uttering these beautifulsentiments did not last very long, as you may imagine. It fell, littleby little, under her quiet gaze, a gaze in which there was neithercontempt nor irony nor wounded pride, but only a tender wistfulness ofinterrogation; and I think the acutest point in my suffering was reachedwhen she said, as I ended: 'Oh; yes, of course I understand. ' "'If only you hadn't come to me here!' I blurted out in the torture ofmy soul. "She was on the threshold when I said it, and she turned and laid herhand gently on mine. 'There was no other way, ' she said; and at themoment it seemed to me like some hackneyed phrase in a novel that shehad used without any sense of its meaning. "I don't remember what I answered or what more we either of us said. Atthe end a desperate longing to take her in my arms and keep her with meswept aside everything else, and I went up to her, pleading, stammering, urging I don't know what.... But she held me back with a quiet look, and went. I had ordered the carriage, as she asked me to; and my lastdefinite recollection is of watching her drive off in the rain.... "I had her promise that she would see me, two days later, at her housein town, and that we should then have what I called 'a decisive talk';but I don't think that even at the moment I was the dupe of my phrase. Iknew, and she knew, that the end had come.... " V "It was about that time (Merrick went on after a long pause) that Idefinitely decided not to sell the Works, but to stick to my job andconform my life to it. "I can't describe to you the rage of conformity that possessed me. Poetry, ideas--all the picture-making processes stopped. A kind of dullself-discipline seemed to me the only exercise worthy of a reflectingmind. I _had_ to justify my great refusal, and I tried to do it byplunging myself up to the eyes into the very conditions I had beeninstinctively struggling to get away from. The only possible consolationwould have been to find in a life of business routine and socialsubmission such moral compensations as may reward the citizen if theyfail the man; but to attain to these I should have had to accept theold delusion that the social and the individual man are two. Now, onthe contrary, I found soon enough that I couldn't get one part of mymachinery to work effectively while another wanted feeding: and that inrejecting what had seemed to me a negation of action I had made all myaction negative. "The best solution, of course, would have been to fall in love withanother woman; but it was long before I could bring myself to wish thatthis might happen to me.... Then, at length, I suddenly and violentlydesired it; and as such impulses are seldom without some kind ofimperfect issue I contrived, a year or two later, to work myself up intothe wished-for state.... She was a woman in society, and with allthe awe of that institution that Paulina lacked. Our relation wasconsequently one of those unavowed affairs in which triviality is theonly alternative to tragedy. Luckily we had, on both sides, risked onlyas much as prudent people stake in a drawingroom game; and when thematch was over I take it that we came out fairly even. "My gain, at all events, was of an unexpected kind. The adventurehad served only to make me understand Paulina's abhorrence of suchexperiments, and at every turn of the slight intrigue I had felt howexasperating and belittling such a relation was bound to be between twopeople who, had they been free, would have mated openly. And so from abrief phase of imperfect forgetting I was driven back to a deeper andmore understanding remembrance.... "This second incarnation of Paulina was one of the strangest episodesof the whole strange experience. Things she had said during ourextraordinary talk, things I had hardly heard at the time, came back tome with singular vividness and a fuller meaning. I hadn't any longerthe cold consolation of believing in my own perspicacity: I saw that herinsight had been deeper and keener than mine. "I remember, in particular, starting up in bed one sleepless night asthere flashed into my head the meaning of her last words: 'There wasno other way'; the phrase I had half-smiled at at the time, as aparrot-like echo of the novel-heroine's stock farewell. I had never, upto that moment, wholly understood why Paulina had come to my house thatnight. I had never been able to make that particular act--which couldhardly, in the light of her subsequent conduct, be dismissed as a blindsurge of passion--square with my conception of her character. She wasat once the most spontaneous and the steadiest-minded woman I hadever known, and the last to wish to owe any advantage to surprise, tounpreparedness, to any play on the spring of sex. The better I came, retrospectively, to know her, the more sure I was of this, and the lessintelligible her act appeared. And then, suddenly, after a night ofhungry restless thinking, the flash of enlightenment came. She had cometo my house, had brought her trunk with her, had thrown herself at myhead with all possible violence and publicity, in order to give me apretext, a loophole, an honourable excuse, for doing and saying--why, precisely what I had said and done! "As the idea came to me it was as if some ironic hand had touched anelectric button, and all my fatuous phrases had leapt out on me in fire. "Of course she had known all along just the kind of thing I shouldsay if I didn't at once open my arms to her; and to save my pride, mydignity, my conception of the figure I was cutting in her eyes, she hadrecklessly and magnificently provided me with the decentest pretext aman could have for doing a pusillanimous thing.... "With that discovery the whole case took a different aspect. It hurtless to think of Paulina--and yet it hurt more. The tinge of bitterness, of doubt, in my thoughts of her had had a tonic quality. It was harderto go on persuading myself that I had done right as, bit by bit, mytheories crumbled under the test of time. Yet, after all, as she herselfhad said, one could judge of results only in the long run.... "The Trants stayed away for two years; and about a year after they gotback, you may remember, Trant was killed in a railway accident. You knowFate's way of untying a knot after everybody has given up tugging at it! "Well--there I was, completely justified: all my weaknesses turned intomerits! I had 'saved' a weak woman from herself, I had kept her to thepath of duty, I had spared her the humiliation of scandal and the miseryof self-reproach; and now I had only to put out my hand and take myreward. "I had avoided Paulina since her return, and she had made no effort tosee me. But after Trant's death I wrote her a few lines, to which shesent a friendly answer; and when a decent interval had elapsed, and Iasked if I might call on her, she answered at once that she would seeme. "I went to her house with the fixed intention of asking her to marryme--and I left it without having done so. Why? I don't know that I cantell you. Perhaps you would have had to sit there opposite her, knowingwhat I did and feeling as I did, to understand why. She was kind, shewas compassionate--I could see she didn't want to make it hard for me. Perhaps she even wanted to make it easy. But there, between us, was thememory of the gesture I hadn't made, forever parodying the one I wasattempting! There wasn't a word I could think of that hadn't an echo init of words of hers I had been deaf to; there wasn't an appeal I couldmake that didn't mock the appeal I had rejected. I sat there and talkedof her husband's death, of her plans, of my sympathy; and I knew sheunderstood; and knowing that, in a way, made it harder.... The door-bellrang and the footman came in to ask if she would receive other visitors. She looked at me a moment and said 'Yes, ' and I got up and shook handsand went away. "A few days later she sailed for Europe, and the next time we met shehad married Reardon.... " VI It was long past midnight, and the terrier's hints became imperious. Merrick rose from his chair, pushed back a fallen log and put up thefender. He walked across the room and stared a moment at the Brangwynetching before which Paulina Trant had paused at a memorable turn oftheir talk. Then he came back and laid his hand on my shoulder. "She summed it all up, you know, when she said that one way of findingout whether a risk is worth taking is _not_ to take it, and then to seewhat one becomes in the long run, and draw one's inferences. The longrun--well, we've run it, she and I. I know what I've become, but that'snothing to the misery of knowing what she's become. She had to have somekind of life, and she married Reardon. Reardon's a very good fellow inhis way; but the worst of it is that it's not her way.... "No: the worst of it is that now she and I meet as friends. We dine atthe same houses, we talk about the same people, we play bridge together, and I lend her books. And sometimes Reardon slaps me on the back andsays: 'Come in and dine with us, old man! What you want is to be cheeredup!' And I go and dine with them, and he tells me how jolly comfortableshe makes him, and what an ass I am not to marry; and she presses onme a second helping of _poulet Maryland_, and I smoke one of Reardon'scigars, and at half-past ten I get into my overcoat, and walk back aloneto my rooms.... "