rest of humanity here. If anything should happen to him, if he should
need help of any sort, what could he do? Call out? But who would hear?
At nine in the morning the porter's wife would come with his tea. But
if anything should happen to him in the meantime? There would be
nothing for it but to wait till nine o'clock.

Ah, if he had married, if he had had children, a wife, a home of his
own, instead of these desolate bachelor chambers!

If he had married, indeed! It was his sorrow's crown of sorrow that he
had not married, that he had not been able to marry, that the girl he
had wished to marry wouldn't have him. Failure? Success? He could have
accounted failure in other things a trifle, he could have laughed at
what the world calls failure, if Elinor Lynd had been his wife. But
that was the heart of his misfortune, she wouldn't have him.

He had met her for the first time when he was a lad of twenty, and she
a girl of eighteen. He could see her palpable before him now: her
slender girlish figure, her bright eyes, her laughing mouth, her warm
brown hair curling round her forehead. Oh, how he had loved her. For
twelve years he had waited upon her, wooed her, hoped to win her. But
she had always said, 'No--I don't love you. I am very fond of you; I
love you as a friend; we all love you that way--my mother, my father,
my sisters. But I can't marry you.' However, she married no one else,
she loved no one else: and for twelve years he was an ever-welcome
guest in her father's house; and she would talk with him, play to him,
pity him; and he could hope. Then she died. He called one day, and
they said she was ill. After that there came a blank in his memory--a
gulf, full of blackness and redness, anguish and confusion; and then a
sort of dreadful sudden calm, when they told him she was dead.