Could I decline this dreadful hour?

I used to keep a diary.

Marcher said to himself that he ought to have rendered her some service - saved her from a capsized boat in the bay, or at least recovered her dressing bag, filched from her cab, in the streets of Naples, by a lazzarone with a stiletto.

An unfair way which some men take with themselves: who, because of the inconceivableness of something they find in one, throw themselves violently into the contrary hypothesis, though altogether as unintelligible to an unbiassed understanding.