u would have had to sit there opposite her, knowing
what I did and feeling as I did, to understand why. She was kind, she
was 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 the
memory of the gesture I hadn't made, forever parodying the one I was
attempting! There wasn't a word I could think of that hadn't an echo in
it of words of hers I had been deaf to; there wasn't an appeal I could
make that didn't mock the appeal I had rejected. I sat there and talked
of her husband's death, of her plans, of my sympathy; and I knew she
understood; and knowing that, in a way, made it harder.... The door-bell
rang 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 hands
and went away.

"A few days later she sailed for Europe, and the next time we met she
had 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 the
fender. He walked across the room and stared a moment at the Brangwyn
etching before which Paulina Trant had paused at a memorable turn of
their 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 finding
out whether a risk is worth taking is _not_ to take it, and then to see
what one becomes in the long run, and draw one's inferences. The long
run--well, we've run it, she and I. I know what I've become, but that's
nothing to the misery of knowing what she's become. She had to have some
kind of life, and she married Reardon. Reardon's a very good fellow in
his 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 at
the 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 and
says: 'Come in and dine with us, old man! What you want is to be cheered
up!' And I go and dine with them, and he tells me how jolly comfortable
she makes him, and what an ass I am not to marry; and she presses on
me a second helping of _poulet Maryland_, and I smoke one of Reardon's
cigars, and at half-past ten I get into my overcoat, and walk back alone
to my rooms...."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Run, by Edith Wharton