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 face.
Why, better even have burst like a thief
And borne you away to a rock for us two,
In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief" . . .
Well, he had not done this. But—