His brain told him that here before him was a woman into whose life he had brought its first ordeal and humiliation.

But his heart only felt a reflective sort of pity: it was not a personal or immediate realisation, that is, not at first.
He was scarcely conscious that he stood and looked at her for quite two minutes, without motion or speech on the part of either; but the dumb, desolate look in her eyes--a look of appeal, astonishment, horror and shame combined, presently clarified his senses, and he slowly grew to look at her as at his punishment, the punishment of his life.
Before--always before--Sophie had been vague and indistinct: seen to-day, forgotten tomorrow; and previous to meeting her scores had affected his senses, affected them not at all deeply.
She was like a date in history to a boy who remembers that it meant something, but what, is not quite sure.

But the meaning and definiteness were his own.

Out of the irresponsibility of his nature, out of the moral ineptitude to which he had been born, moral knowledge came to him at last.

Love had not done it; neither the love of Christine, as strong as death, nor the love of his sister, the deepest thing he ever knew--but the look of a woman wronged.