Love he might have understood--for women needed it, he knew, and he was burdened by no delusion concerning the place he occupied in Connie's horizon.

But before the breathless chase of excitement in which she lived, the frenzied invocation of pleasure that filled her thoughts, he found himself groping blindly for some meaning which would explain the thing it could not justify.
The hours dragged so heavily that by ten o'clock he put on his overcoat and snow-shoes and went out again into the street.

He was possessed at the moment by a growing fear of missing Connie, and as he walked toward the opera house he had sense of a premonition almost occult in power that the terrible destiny which had her in its clutch was gathering energy for some pitiless catastrophe.

With characteristic patience he searched his own conscience, the incidents of his daily life, and held himself rather than his wife to account.

After all, he was the stronger of the two, and yet when had he put forth his strength or his pity on her behalf?
In the closer human relations mere indifference showed suddenly as sin, and the sluggish spirit which had controlled his married life appeared in his memory as a form of moral apathy.