He fancied that when he reached his own little room, the cloud that now seemed to hang over all his faculties would disperse, and he would see some plain road before him.

In this he was not altogether disappointed, for it did become clear to him, as he sat in his chair, that the question he had to solve was whether he could now find any motive strong enough to keep him in life.
He realized that Claudia's action must be accepted as a final destruction of his short dream of happiness.

He felt that he could not go back to his old life, much less to his old attitude of mind, as if nothing had happened--as if he were an unchanged man, save for one sorrowful memory.

The transformation had been too thorough for that.

He had almost hoped that he would find himself the subject of some sudden revulsion of feeling, some uncontrollable fit of remorse, which would restore him, beaten and bruised, to his old refuge; but had his hope been realized, his sense of relief would, he knew, have been mingled with a measure of contempt for a mind so completely a prey to transient emotions.