That fate, in London, very little later, drove him straight before it--drove him one Sunday afternoon, in the rain, to the door of the Hammond Synges.

He marched in other words close up to the cannon that was to blow him to pieces.

But three weeks, when he reappeared to me, had elapsed since then, yet (to vary my metaphor) the burden he was to carry for the rest of his days was firmly lashed to his back.

I don't mean by this that Flora had been persuaded to contract her scope; I mean that he had been treated to the unconditional snub which, as the event was to show, couldn't have been bettered as a means of securing him.

She hadn't calculated, but she had said "Never!" and that word had made a bed big enough for his long-legged patience.