I had been telling lies and cutting capers over half Britain, thinking I was playing a deep game, and I had only been behaving like a schoolboy.

On such occasions a man is rarely just to himself, and the intensity of my self-abasement would have satisfied my worst enemy.

It didn't console me that the futility of it all was not my blame.

I was looking for excuses.

It was the facts that cried out against me, and on the facts I had been an idiotic failure.
For of course Ivery had played with me, played with me since the first day at Biggleswick.