“Forgive me," he went on. "For a long time I have had the peculiar habit of not arriving but appearing.”

“He had seen me several times, and had intended to call on me long before, but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it.”

“Ramses had always been fond of Helen, in his peculiar fashion, but if he had looked at me as he was looking at her, I would have sent for a constable.”

“The casualty lists went on appearing for a long time after the Armistice - last spasms of Europe's severed arteries.”

“Please forgive the long letter; I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

“For a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such shadows of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature - shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my identity - but slow degrees I became a frequenter of this straight narrow path.”