He had passed through dreadful moments in the early part of the night while Rachel slept. When he had realized that he was doomed--for the conviction that death was upon him had been absolutely sincere and final for a long time--he was panic-stricken, impressed, and strangely proud, all at once. But the panic was paramount. He was afraid, horribly afraid. His cowardice was ghastly, even to himself, shot through though it was by a peculiar appreciation of the grandiosity of his fate as a martyr to clumsy chance. He was reduced by it to the trembling repentant sinner, as the proud prisoner is reduced to abjection by prolonged and secret torture in Oriental prisons. He ranged in fright over the whole of his career, and was obliged to admit, and to admit with craven obsequiousness, that he had been a wicked man, obstinate in wickedness. He remembered matters which had utterly vanished from his memory. He remembered, for example, the excellence of his moral aspirations when he had first thought of Rachel as a wife, and the firm, high resolves which were to be carried out if he married her. Forgotten! Forgotten! As soon as he had won her he had thought of nothing but self-indulgence, pleasure, capricious delights. His tailor still languished for money long justly due. He had not even restored the defalcations in Horrocleave's petty cash. Of course it would have been difficult to restore a sum comparatively so large without causing suspicion. To restore it would have involved a long series of minute acts, alterations of alterations in the cash entries, and constant ingenuity in a hundred ways. But it ought to have been done, and might have been done. It might have been done. He admitted that candidly, fully, with despicable tremblings.... And the worst of all, naturally, was the theft from his aunt. Theft? Was it a theft? He had never before consented to define the affair as a theft; it had been a misfortune, an indiscretion. But now he was ready to call it a theft, in order to be on the safe side. For the sake of placating Omnipotence let it be deemed a theft, and even a mean theft, entailing dire consequences on a weak old woman! Let it be as bad as the severest judge chose to make it! He would not complain. He would accept the arraignment (though really he had not been so blameworthy, etc....). He knew that with all his sins he, possessed the virtues of good nature, kindness, and politeness. He was not wholly vile. In some ways he honestly considered himself a model to mankind.