Every instinct in him shouted that she loved him, in spite of her cruel protestations.
All that afternoon he stayed locked in his room, and during those solitary hours he came to know his own soul.

He saw what life meant: what part love plays in it, how dwarfed and withered all things are when pitted against it.
A man came with his supper, but he called to him to be gone.

The night settled slowly, and with the darkness came such a feeling of despair and lonesomeness that Burrell lighted every lamp and candle in the place to dispel, in some measure, the gloom that had fallen upon him.
There are those who believe that in passing from daylight to darkness a subtle transition occurs akin to the change from positive to negative in an electrical current, and that this intangible, untraceable atmospheric influence exerts a definite, psychical effect upon men and their modes of thought.

Be this as it may, it is certain that as the night grew darker the Lieutenant's mood changed.

He lost his fierce anger at the girl, and reasoned that he owed it to her to set himself right in her eyes; that in all justice to her he ought to prove his own sincerity, and assure her that whatever her own state of mind had been, she wronged him when she said he had made sport of her for his own pleasure.