He refused altogether to think of her as weak or suffering; he shrank from his own past misgivings, his own prophecies about her.

The world would be a mere dark prison-house if her bright beauty were over-clouded! She was not made for death, and she should stand to him as the image of all that escapes and resists and defies that tyrant of our years, and pain, his instrument and herald.
He reached London in the midst of a rainy fog.

The endless black streets stretched before him in the dreary December morning like so many roads into the nether regions; the gas-lamps scattered an unseasonable light through the rain and fog; it was the quintessence of murky, cheerless winter.
He reached his own rooms, and found his man up and waiting for him, and a meal ready.

It was but three days since he had been last there, the open telegram was still lying on the table.

One of his first acts was to put it hastily out of sight.