I had grown ashamed of this one-sided friendship.

It was, indeed, partly because of that that I had taken to the wilds--to a hut near a wood, and all the rest of what now seemed youthful foolishness.

I had desired to live alone, not to be helped any more, until I could make _some_ return.

As a natural result I had lost nearly all my friends and found myself standing there as naked as on the day I was born.
All around me stretched an immense town--an immense blackness.
People--thousands of people hurried past me, had errands, had aims, had others to talk to, to trifle with.

But I had nobody.