It was the world that Stephen knew; life moulded in sculptural forms and encrusted with the delicate patina of tradition.

Here was all that he had once loved; yet he realized suddenly, with a sensation of loneliness, that here, not in the mean streets, he felt, as Vetch would have said, "stranger than Robinson Crusoe." Something was missing.

Something was lost that he could never recover.

Was it Vetch, after all, who had shown him the way out, who had knocked a hole in the wall?
When Darrow stopped the car before the Culpeper gate, Stephen turned and held out his hand.

"Thank you," he said simply.