Though with little faith in the remedy, he betook himself to a quiet spot on the coast of Norfolk, associated with memories of holiday in childhood, and there for the rest of the time he had allowed himself did what a man could do to get benefit from sea and sky.
And in these endless hours of solitude there grew upon him a perception of the veritable cause of his illness.

Not loss of station, not overwork, not love; but simply the lie to which he was committed.

There was the root of the matter.

Slowly, dimly, he groped toward the fact that what rendered his life intolerable was its radical dishonesty.
Lived openly, avowedly, it would have involved hardships indeed, but nothing of this dull wretchedness which made the world a desert.

He began to see how much better, how much easier, it would have been to tell the truth two years ago.