The world had given him much to eat and drink, but it had given him little to do, and thus he had gradually fallen away from his early purposes, till his energy hardly sufficed for the doing of that little.

His living gave him eight hundred a year; his wife's fortune nearly doubled that.

He had married early, and had got his living early, and had been very prosperous.

But he was not a happy man.

He knew that he had put off the day of action till the power of action had passed away from him.