Primarily I wanted to explain Leonard Boyce.

I could only do it by showing you how he reacted on myself--myself being an unimportant and uninteresting person.

It was all very well when I could stand aside and dispassionately analyse such reactions.

The same with regard to my dear Betty.

But now if I adopted the same method of telling you the story of Betty and the story of Boyce--the method of reaction, so to speak--I should be merely whining into your ears the dolorous tale of Duncan Meredyth, paralytic and idiot.
The deuce of it is that, for a long time, nothing particular or definite happened.