It was humiliating enough at first, but he got used to it after a while, and by dint of thrusting the disagreeable subject from his thoughts, by refusing to let the disgrace sink deep in his mind, by forgetting the whole business as much as he could, he arrived after a time to be passably contented.

His pliable character had again rearranged itself to suit the new environment.
Along with this, however, came a sense of freedom.

Now he no longer had anything to fear from society; it had shot its bolt, it had done its worst, there was no longer anything to restrain him, now he could do anything.
He was in precisely this state of mind when he received the cards for the opening of the roadhouse, the "resort" out on the Almshouse drive, about which Toby, the waiter at the Imperial, had spoken to him.
Vandover attended it.

It was a debauch of forty-eight hours, the longest and the worst he had ever indulged in.

For a long time the brute had been numb and dormant; now at last when he woke he was raging, more insatiable, more irresistible than ever.
The affair at the roadhouse was but the beginning.