forgotten tomorrow; and previous to meeting her scores had affected his
senses, affected them not at all deeply.

She was like a date in history to a boy who remembers that it meant
something, but what, is not quite sure. But the meaning and definiteness
were his own. Out of the irresponsibility of his nature, out of the
moral ineptitude to which he had been born, moral knowledge came to him
at last. Love had not done it; neither the love of Christine, as strong
as death, nor the love of his sister, the deepest thing he ever knew--but
the look of a woman wronged. He had inflicted on her the deepest wrong
that may be done a woman. A woman can forgive passion and ruin, and
worse, if the man loves her, and she can forgive herself, remembering
that to her who loved much, much was forgiven. But out of wilful
idleness, the mere flattery of the senses, a vampire feeding upon the
spirits and souls of others, for nothing save emotion for emotion's sake
--that was shameless, it was the last humiliation of a woman. As it
were, to lose joy, and glow, and fervour of young, sincere and healthy
life, to whip up the dying vitality and morbid brain of a consumptive!

All in a flash he saw it, realised it, and hated himself for it. He knew
that as long as he lived, an hour or ten years, he never could redeem
himself; never could forgive himself, and never buy back the life that he
had injured. Many a time in his life he had kissed and ridden away, and
had been unannoyed by conscience. But in proportion as conscience had
neglected him before, it ground him now between the stones, and he saw
himself as he was. Come of a gentleman's family, he knew he was no
gentleman. Having learned the forms and courtesies of life, having
infused his whole career with a spirit of gay bonhomie, he knew that in
truth he was a swaggerer; that bad taste, infamous bad taste, had marked
almost everything that he had done in his life. He had passed as one of