But most of all he loathed his past, not on account of her, but of his own weakness that had made him her dupe and a misunderstood man to his friends.

He had been derelict of duty in his unselfish devotion to her; he had stifled his ambition, and underrated his own possibilities.

No wonder that others had accepted him at his own valuation.

Clarence Brant was a modest man, but the egotism of modesty is more fatal than that of pretension, for it has the haunting consciousness of superior virtue.
He re-entered his own room and again threw himself into his chair.

His calm was being succeeded by a physical weariness; he remembered he had not slept the night before, and he ought to take some rest to be fresh in the early morning.