It was at present as if the backward picture had hung there, the long crooked course, grey in the shadow of his solitude.

It had been a dreadful cheerful sociable solitude, a solitude of life or choice, of community; but though there had been people enough all round it there had been but three or four persons IN it.

Waymarsh was one of these, and the fact struck him just now as marking the record.

Mrs.Newsome was another, and Miss Gostrey had of a sudden shown signs of becoming a third.

Beyond, behind them was the pale figure of his real youth, which held against its breast the two presences paler than itself--the young wife he had early lost and the young son he had stupidly sacrificed.