d come out of my club, and was walking up St. James's
Street, towards Piccadilly; he was moving in an opposite sense; and
thus we approached each other. He didn't see me, however, till we had
drawn rather near to a conjunction: then he gave a little start of
recognition, his eyes brightened, his pace slackened, his right hand
prepared to advance itself--and I bowed slightly, and pursued my way.
Don't ask why I did it. It is enough to confess it without having to
explain it. I glanced backwards, by and by, over my shoulder. He was
standing where I had met him, half turned round, and looking after me.
But when he saw that I was observing him, he hastily shifted about,
and continued his descent of the street.

That was only three weeks ago. Only three weeks ago I still had it in
my power to act. I am sure--I don't know why I am sure, but I _am_
sure--that I could have deterred him. For all that one can gather from
the brief note he left behind, it seems he had no special, definite
motive; he had met with no losses, got into no scrape; he was simply
tired and sick of life and of himself. 'I have no friends,' he wrote.
'Nobody will care. People don't like me; people avoid me. I have
wondered why; I have tried to watch myself and discover; I have tried
to be decent. I suppose it must be that I emit a repellent fluid; I
suppose I am a "bad sort."' He had a morbid notion that people didn't
like him, that people avoided him! Oh, to be sure, there were the
Bunns and the Krausskopfs and their ilk, plentiful enough: but he
understood what it was that attracted _them_. Other people, the people
_he_ could have liked, kept their distance--were civil, indeed, but
reserved. He wanted bread, and they gave him a stone. It never struck
him, I suppose, that they attributed the reserve to him. But I--I knew
that his reserve was only an effect of his shyness; I _knew_ that he
wanted bread: and that knowledge constituted my moral responsibility.
I didn't know that his need was extreme; but I have tried in vain to
absolve myself with the reflection. I ought to have made inquiries.
When I think of that afternoon in St. James's Street--only three weeks
ago--I feel like an assassin. The vision of him, as he stopped and
looked after me--I can't banish it. Why didn't some good spirit move
me to turn back and overtake him?

It is so hard for the mind to reconcile itself to the irretrievable.
I can't shake off a sense that there is something to be do