This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary, but for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. - P12