He was so distinctly fagged-out that it must serve precisely as his convenience, and if he could but consistently be good for little enough he might do everything he wanted.
Everything he wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon--the common unattainable art of taking things as they came.

He appeared to himself to have given his best years to an active appreciation of the way they didn't come; but perhaps--as they would seemingly here be things quite other--this long ache might at last drop to rest.

He could easily see that from the moment he should accept the notion of his foredoomed collapse the last thing he would lack would be reasons and memories.

Oh if he SHOULD do the sum no slate would hold the figures! The fact that he had failed, as he considered, in everything, in each relation and in half a dozen trades, as he liked luxuriously to put it, might have made, might still make, for an empty present; but it stood solidly for a crowded past.

It had not been, so much achievement missed, a light yoke nor a short load.