When he had realized that he was doomed--for the
conviction that death was upon him had been absolutely sincere and
final for a long time--he was panic-stricken, impressed, and strangely
proud, all at once. But the panic was paramount. He was afraid,
horribly afraid. His cowardice was ghastly, even to himself, shot
through though it was by a peculiar appreciation of the grandiosity
of his fate as a martyr to clumsy chance. He was reduced by it to
the trembling repentant sinner, as the proud prisoner is reduced to
abjection by prolonged and secret torture in Oriental prisons. He
ranged in fright over the whole of his career, and was obliged to
admit, and to admit with craven obsequiousness, that he had been a
wicked man, obstinate in wickedness.
He remembered matters which had utterly vanished from his memory. He
remembered, for example, the excellence of his moral aspirations when
he had first thought of Rachel as a wife, and the firm, high resolves
which were to be carried out if he married her. Forgotten!
Forgotten! As soon as he had won her he had thought of nothing but
self-indulgence, pleasure, capricious delights. His tailor still
languished for money long justly due. He had not even restored the
defalcations in Horrocleave's petty cash.
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