She might be the mother of his children--and he would have to watch her instincts, which he surely would have daily grown to loathe, coming out in them.
And all because money had failed him in his own resources and was necessary to his ambitions, and this necessity, working with an appeal to his senses when fired with wine, had brought about the situation.
God Almighty! How low he felt! And he groaned aloud.
Then from a small dispatch box, which he had got his servant to put by his bed, he drew forth a little gold case, in which for all these years he had kept an oak leaf.

He had had it made in the enthusiasm of his youth when he had returned to London after Halcyone, the wise-eyed child, had given it to him, and it had gone about everywhere with him since as a sort of fetish.
It burnt his sight when he looked at it now.

For had he been "good and true"?
Alas! No--nothing but a sensual, ambitious weakling..