He was no longer invited anywhere, and the girls he had
known never saw him when he passed them on the street. It was
humiliating enough at first, but he got used to it after a while, and by
dint of thrusting the disagreeable subject from his thoughts, by
refusing to let the disgrace sink deep in his mind, by forgetting the
whole business as much as he could, he arrived after a time to be
passably contented. His pliable character had again rearranged itself to
suit the new environment.
Along with this, however, came a sense of freedom. Now he no longer had
anything to fear from society; it had shot its bolt, it had done its
worst, there was no longer anything to restrain him, now he could do
anything.
He was in precisely this state of mind when he received the cards for
the opening of the roadhouse, the "resort" out on the Almshouse drive,
about which Toby, the waiter at the Imperial, had spoken to him.
Vandover attended it. It was a debauch of forty-eight hours, the longest
and the worst he had ever indulged in. For a long time the brute had
been numb and dormant; now at last when he woke he was raging, more
insatiable, more irresistible than ever.
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