But he had banished himself from it by his own folly and sin, and when he turned his eyes toward it he could see only the "flaming brand, and the gate with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms." But even Adam had his Eve with him, "to drop some natural tears, and wipe them soon." He was utterly alone.
If his thoughts, so dazed and bewildered usually, became clear for a little while, it was always Felicita whose image stood out most distinctly before him.

He had loved her passionately; surely never had any man loved a woman with the same intensity--so he said to himself.
Even now the very crime he had committed seemed as nothing to him, because he had been guilty of it for her.

His love for her covered its heinousness from his eyes.

His conscience had become the blind and dumb slave of his passion.

So blind and dumb had it been that it had scarcely stirred or murmured until his sin was found out, and it was scarcely aroused to life even yet.
In a certain sense he had been religious, having been most sedulously trained in religion from his earliest consciousness.