.

I came up to town at one-and-twenty, from Toneborough, in Outer Wessex, where I was born, and where, before I left, I had won the heart of a young woman of my own age.

I promised her marriage, took advantage of my promise, and--am a bachelor.' 'The old story.' The other nodded.
'I left the place, and thought at the time I had done a very clever thing in getting so easily out of an entanglement.

But I have lived long enough for that promise to return to bother me--to be honest, not altogether as a pricking of the conscience, but as a dissatisfaction with myself as a specimen of the heap of flesh called humanity.

If I were to ask you to lend me fifty pounds, which I would repay you next midsummer, and I did not repay you, I should consider myself a shabby sort of fellow, especially if you wanted the money badly.