Edith Wharton

The Reef Edith Wharton

All the way from Charing Cross to Dover the train had hammered the words of thetelegram into George Darrow's ears, ringing every change of irony on its commonplacesyllables: rattling them out like a discharge of musketry, letting them, one by one, dripslowly and coldly into his brain, or shaking, tossing, transposing them like the dice in somegame of the gods of malice; and now, as he emerged from his compartment at the pier, andstood facing the wind-swept platform and the angry sea beyond, they leapt out at him as iffrom the crest of the waves, stung and blinded him with a fresh fury of derision."Unexpected obstacle. Please don't come till thirtieth. Anna."She had put him off at the very last moment, and for the second time: put him off with allher sweet reasonableness, and for one of her usual "good" reasons-he was certain thatthis reason, like the other, (the visit of her husband's uncle's widow) would be "good"! Butit was that very certainty which chilled him. The fact of her dealing so reasonably with theircase shed an ironic light on the idea that there had been any exceptional warmth in thegreeting she had given him after their twelve years apart.