Then, all at once, as he was thinking and dreaming and seeing, there would seize upon him the old appetite, coincident with the seizure of his brain by the old sense of cynicism at its worst--such a worst as had made him insult Jake Hough when the rough countryman was ready to take his part that wild night at the Cote Dorion.
At such moments life became a conflict--almost a terror--for as yet he had not swung into line with the new order of things.

In truth, there was no order of things; for one life was behind him and the new one was not yet decided upon, save that here he would stay--here out of the world, out of the game, far from old associations, cut off, and to be for ever cut off, from all that he had ever known or seen or felt or loved!...

Loved! When did he ever love?
If love was synonymous with unselfishness, with the desire to give greater than the desire to get, then he had never known love.

He realised now that he had given Kathleen only what might be given across a dinner-table--the sensuous tribute of a temperament, passionate without true passion or faith or friendship.
Kathleen had known that he gave her nothing worth the having; for in some meagre sense she knew what love was, and had given it meagrely, after her nature, to another man, preserving meanwhile the letter of the law, respecting that bond which he had shamed by his excesses.
Kathleen was now sitting at another man's table--no, probably at his own table--his, Charley Steele's own table in his own house--the house he had given her by deed of gift the day he died.

Tom Fairing was sitting where he used to sit, talking across the table--not as he used to talk--looking into Kathleen's face as he had never looked.