Often enough he had said that honour was his god, and he had taken pleasure in proving that he who makes the rule of honour the law of his life must of necessity be a good man, incapable of any falsehood or meanness or cruelty, and therefore truthful, generous, and kind; in other words, such an one must really be all that a good Christian aims at being.
The religion of honour, Giovanni used to say, was of a higher nature than Christianity, since Christians might sin, repent, and be forgiven again and again, to the biblical seventy times seven times; but a man who did one dishonourable deed in his whole life ceased to be a man of honour for ever.

Having that certainty before his eyes, how could he ever be in danger of a fall?
But now he was ashamed, for he had fallen; he had forsaken his deity and his faith; the infamy he had threatened to bring on Angela had come back upon him and branded him.

It was not because he had brought her to his lodging to talk with him alone, for he saw nothing dishonourable in that, since he felt sure that no harm could come to her in consequence.

The dishonour lay in having thought of the rest afterwards, and in having been on the point of carrying out his threat.

If he had kept her a prisoner only a few hours, the whole train of results would most probably have followed; if he had not let her go till the next day, they would have been inevitable and irretrievable.