He did not attempt to blink facts; he did not deny the truth of the revelation or seek to extenuate its force.

He did not tell himself that the matter was a trifle, or that its effect would be transient.

He recognized that he had fallen from the state of a priest vowed to Heaven, to that of a man whose whole heart and mind had gone out in love for a woman and were filled with her image.

His judgment of himself was utterly reversed, his pre-suppositions confounded, his scheme of life wrecked; all this he knew for truth, unless indeed it might be that victory could still be his--victory after a struggle even to death; a struggle that had found no type or forecast in the mimic contests that had marked, almost without disturbing, his earlier progress on the road of his choice.
In the long hours that he sat gazing at the picture his mind was the scene of changing moods.

At first the sense of horror and shame was paramount.