Everything fell together, confessed, explained, overwhelmed; leaving him most of all stupefied at the blindness he had cherished. The fate he had been marked for he had met with a vengeance-he had emptied the cup to the lees; he had been the man of his time, THE man, to whom nothing on earth was to have happened. That was the rare stroke-that was his visitation. So he saw it, as we say, in pale horror, while the pieces fitted and fitted. So she had seen it while he didn't, and so she served at this hour to drive the truth home. It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion. This the companion of his vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had then offered him the chance to baffle his doom. One's doom, however, was never baffled, and on the day she told him his own had come down she had seen him but stupidly stare at the escape she offered him. The escape would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived. She had lived-who could say now with what passion?-since she had loved him for himself; whereas he had never thought of her {ah how it hugely glared at him!} but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her use.
( Henry James )
[ The Beast in the Jungle ]
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