So in due course the Hottentot departed with my father's letter and my own, and that was the last direct communication which we had with Henri or Marie Marais for more than a year.
I think that those long months were on the whole the most wretched I have ever spent.

The time of life which I was passing through is always trying; that period of emergence from youth into full and responsible manhood which in Africa generally takes place earlier than it does here in England, where young men often seem to me to remain boys up to five-and-twenty.

The circumstances which I have detailed made it particularly so in my own case, for here was I, who should have been but a cheerful lad, oppressed with the sorrows and anxieties, and fettered by the affections of maturity.
I could not get Marie out of my mind; her image was with me by day and by night, especially by night, which caused me to sleep badly.

I became morose, supersensitive, and excitable.

I developed a cough, and thought, as did others, that I was going into a decline.