Self-pity grew upon him, and self-admiration.

By heaven! How could a woman treat a man--a man who could write to her like this--as Chloe had treated him! The old smart revived; or rather, the old indelible impressions of it left on nerve and brain.
The letters lay on his knee.

He sat brooding: his hands upon the packets, his head bowed.

One might have thought him a man overcome and dissolved by the enervating memories of passion; but in truth, he was gradually and steadily reacting against them; resuming, and this time finally, as far as Chloe Fairmile was concerned, a man's mastery of himself.

He thought of her unkindness and cruelty--of the misery he had suffered--and now of the reckless caprice with which, during the preceding weeks, she had tried to entangle him afresh, with no respect for his married life, for his own or Daphne's peace of mind.
He judged her, and therewith, himself.