But although he still condemned, now he understood, if not the defense of such an attitude, at least the existence of it.

He might still think it a folly; it no longer appeared a figment.

A sin it was, no doubt, and a degradation, but not an enormity or an absurdity; and when he tried again to fancy his life without Claudia, he struggled in vain against the growing conviction that the pictures he had condemned as caricatures of humanity had truth in them, and that it might be his part to prove it.
With a shiver he turned away.

Such imaginings were not good for a man, nor the place that bred them.

He took the shortest cut that led out of the Park and back to the streets, where he found lights and people, and his thoughts, sensitive to the atmosphere round him, took a brighter hue.