It was such love as Michelangelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself.

Yes, Basil could have saved him.
But it was too late now.

The past could always be annihilated.
Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that.

But the future was inevitable.

There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real.
He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that covered it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen.
Was the face on the canvas viler than before?
It seemed to him that it was unchanged, and yet his loathing of it was intensified.