The debasing environment into which he had plunged on inheriting the fortune which his father had accumulated, had undermined all his faith in womanhood.

He could not see beyond the Tenderloin purview.
But pride and selfishness were screamingly alive within him.

To these was added the inordinate conceit of the habitual libertine, a combination than which there is nothing more sensitive in the entire human composition.
But as Collins gazed on the graceful lines of her full figure and on the almost classic beauty of her marmoreal features, he could not stifle a pang of anxiety at thought of losing her.

The fact that he had discarded her in all but name, for the dubious pleasures of a life of dissipation, did not occur to him.

He believed in the established moral code that excuses the offenses of the man and eternally condemns the woman.