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 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 of knowing what she’s become. She had to have some kind of life, a............