quickly, painlessly, how true a friend I should have thought it!
It was the agony of dying inch by inch which was so hard to bear.

It was some minutes before I could collect myself sufficiently to
withdraw from the support of the railings, and to start afresh. I
stumbled blindly over the uneven road. Once, like a drunken man, I
lurched forward, and fell upon my knees. Such was my backboneless
state that for some seconds I remained where I was, half disposed
to let things slide, accept the good the gods had sent me, and
make a night of it just there. A long night, I fancy, it would
have been, stretching from time unto eternity.

Having regained my feet, I had gone perhaps another couple of
hundred yards along the road--Heaven knows that it seemed to me
just then a couple of miles!--when there came over me again that
overpowering giddiness which, I take it, was born of my agony of
hunger. I staggered, helplessly, against a low wall which, just
there, was at the side of the path. Without it I should have
fallen in a heap. The attack appeared to last for hours; I suppose
it was only seconds; and, when I came to myself, it was as though
I had been aroused from a swoon of sleep,--aroused, to an
extremity of pain. I exclaimed aloud,

'For a loaf of bread what wouldn't I do!'

I looked about me, in a kind of frenzy. As I did so I for the
first time became conscious that behind me was a house. It was not
a large one. It was one of those so-called villas which are
springing up in multitudes all round London, and which are let at
rentals of from twenty-five to forty pounds a year. It was