To go away.

To see her no more.

This was death by inches.

As he sat hour after hour in his little room behind the Embassy it seemed to him as if, by some frightful exertion of his will, he were wading with incredible slowness out to sea, over endless flats in inch-deep water, which after an interminable journey would be deep enough to drown him at last.
The nausea and horror of this slow death were upon him.

Nevertheless, he meant to move towards it.