The way out in Lorna's case he had discovered.

But what relation had this new factor of his dilemma to Mel Iden?
He could never marry her after he had killed Swann.
Lane went to bed, and when he rested his spent body, he pondered over every phase of the case.

Reason and intelligence had their say.

He knew he had become morbid, sick, rancorous, base, obsessed with this iniquity and his passion to stamp on it, as if it were a venomous serpent.

He would have liked to do some magnificent and awful deed, that would show this little, narrow, sordid world at home the truth, and burn forever on their memories the spirit of a soldier.