k at his life." That
life, until he met her, had rippled and run like a river. But he met her
and loved her and lost her--and it was as if a great stone had been cast
by a devil into his life's mid-current. The waves strove about it--the
waves that had "come for their joy, and found this horrible stone
full-tide."

The stone thwarted God. But the lover has had two ways of thinking about
it. Though the waves, in all their strength and fullness, could not win
past, a thread of water might escape and run through the
"evening-country," safe, untormented, silent, until it reached the sea.
This would be his tender, acquiescent brooding on all she is to him, and
the hope that still they may be united at the last, though time shall
then have stilled his passion.

The second way was better!

"Or else I would think, 'Perhaps some night
When new things happen, a meteor-ball
May slip through the sky in a line of light,
And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall,
And my waves no longer champ nor chafe,
Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!'"

For the husband might die, and he, still young and vigorous, might try
again to win her. . . . That was how he had been wont to "sit and look
at his life."

"But, Edith dead! No doubting more!"

All the dreams are over; all the brooding days have been lived in vain.

"But, dead! All's done with: wait who may,
Watch and wear and wonder who will.
Oh, my whole life that ends to-day!
Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still,
'The woman is dead that was none of his;
And the man that was none of hers may go!'
There's only the past left: worry that!" . . .

All that he was or could have been, she should have had for a word, a
"want put into a look." She had not given that look; now she can never
give it--and perhaps she _does_ want him. He feels that she does--a
"pulse in his cheek that stabs and stops" assures him that she "needs
help in her grave, and finds none near"--that from his heart, precisely
_his_, she now at last wants warmth. And he can only send it--so! . . .
His acquiescence then had been his error.

"I ought to have done more: once my speech,
And once your answer, and there, the end,
And Edith was henceforth out of reach!
Why, men do more to deserve a friend,
Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise,
Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the f