“I have lived for a good long while. Enough to have borne the world,” he said. “And sometimes, the world is far too much for me. Too great. Too painful. Too lonely. I expect, if Ms. Tillerman will allow me to interpret her past actions, she may have felt the same. Is it selfish then, or self-preserving, to shut oneself away? At what point does one give up, so to speak, the ghost?”
