I have avoided even considering them before.

Shall I tell you why?
Because I didn't want to face the temptation they might bring with them.

I always knew what would happen if escape became hopeless.

It's the ugliness I can't stand--the ugliness of cheap food, cheap clothes, uncomfortable furniture, coarse voices, coarse friends if I would have them.

How do you suppose I have lived here these last three years, a teacher in the national schools?
Look up and down this long, dreary street, at the names above the shops, at the villas in which the tradespeople live, and ask yourself where my friends were to come from?
The clergyman, perhaps?
He is over seventy, a widower, and he never comes near the place.