And at the instant he had read the words he had known that he didn't hate her.

But he was a fool, just the same; he was a fool for treating her as he did--as Dade had said.
He had known that all along; he knew that was the reason why he had curbed his rage when it would have driven him to commit some rash action.

He had been a fool, but had he let himself go he would have been a bigger one.
Betty had appraised him correctly--"sized him up," in Dade's idiomatic phraseology--and knew that his vicious impulses were surface ones that had been acquired and not inherited, as he had thought.

And he was strangely pleased.
He looked once around the room, noting the spotless cleanliness of it before he blew out the light.

And then he stepped across the floor and into the dining-room, tip-toeing toward the stairs, that he might awaken no one.