"David said so, and he was right--it has gone very deep." So Malcolm shook off the dust of Staplegrove, and the gates of his City of dreams clanged behind him.
"He must dree his weird," he said to himself, as he sat down to his work in the gloomy room in Lincoln's Inn, and in spite of heart-sickness he worked on stolidly and well.

The evenings were his worst time, when he went back to the empty house at Cheyne Walk and sat on the balcony brooding over his troubles, until the light faded and an eerie darkness crept over the river.
"I suppose many men have to go through this sort of thing," he would say to himself, trying to philosophise in his old way, but if any one had seen his face! "What does our glorious Will say?
--'Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.' Ah, but he also says, 'How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!'" And sometimes, when the silence and solitude oppressed him terribly, he would picture to himself the dreary future.
"I shall never marry," he would say.

"There is only one woman in the whole world that I want, and she will have nothing to do with me and my love, and no other woman shall ever be my wife." And then he would wonder sadly what life would be like when he was an old bachelor; would he be living on here with Amias and Verity, or would he go back to his mother and do his duty to her in her old age?
But with all his bitter ruminations he never let himself go again, but battled manfully with his pain, though as the days went on he grew paler and thinner, and looked wretchedly ill.
Malcolm knew that his mother and Anna were back at Queen's Gate, but it was quite ten days before he saw them.

He dreaded the ordeal of his mother's searching glances; but at last one evening he plucked up his courage and went.
Anna, who saw him coming, flew down the staircase to meet him.

She looked younger than ever, and quite pretty, with the soft pink colour in her cheeks and her fair hair; but her smile faded when she saw Malcolm's face.
"Oh, Malcolm, have you been ill ?" she asked in an alarmed voice.
"No, dear, not ill--only a trifle seedy and out of sorts.