And he felt that it would be a duty harder to perform than any he had ever known.

She seemed to have drifted so far from him, or he from her.

It was difficult even to see her face in imagination; another face always came instead, and indeed needed no summoning.
He rose next morning with a stern determination to marry Emma Vine in less than a month from that date.
On Tuesday he went to London.

A hansom put him down before the house in Highbury about six o'clock.

It was a semidetached villa, stuccoed, bow-windowed, of two storeys, standing pleasantly on a wide road skirted by similar dwellings, and with a row of acacias in front.