His desire for position and power was that; even his yearning for corruption was but the desire for the satiation of a vanity as monstrous as it was passionless.

His to have what was shared by those he envied--the power to pick and choose, to ignore, to punish.
His to receive, not to seek; to dispense, not to stand waiting for his portion; his the freedom of the forbidden, of everything beyond him, of all withheld, denied by this bright, loose-robed, wanton-eyed goddess from whose invisible altar he had caught a whiff of sacrificial odours, standing there through the wintry years in the squalor and reek of things.
Now he had arrived among those outlying camps where camp-followers and masters mingled.

Certain card-rooms were open to him, certain drawing-rooms, certain clubs.

Through them he shouldered, thrilled as he advanced deeper into the throng, fired with the contact of the crush around him.
Already the familiarity of his appearance and his name seemed to sanction his presence; two minor clubs, but good ones--in need of dues--had strained at this social camel and swallowed him.

Card-rooms welcomed him--not the rooms once flung open contemptuously for his plucking--but rooms where play was fiercer, and where those who faced him expected battle to the limit.
And they got it, for he no longer felt obliged to lose.