by Henry James · 1903
John Marcher confides to May Bartram his lifelong conviction that some rare, terrible fate is crouched in wait for him, and she quietly commits herself to watching beside him for it. Years pass in London as the two grow old together on the strength of this shared secret, Marcher too absorbed in his own impending doom to notice what he is actually failing to do. Only after May dies does Marcher grasp, standing at her grave, that the catastrophe he spent his life bracing for was the very love he let pass him by.