instead of having any thing to be
proud of, he was in reality one who, before any jury of men or women
called to judge him, must hide his head in shame?

The thought once allowed to enter and remain long enough to be
questioned, never more went far from him. For a time he walked in the
midst of a dull cloud, first of dread, then of dismay--a cloud from
which came thunders, and lightnings, and rain. It passed, and a
doubtful dawn rose dim and scared upon his consciousness, a dawn in
which the sun did not appear, and on which followed a gray, solemn day.
A humbler regard of himself had taken the place of confidence and
satisfaction. An undefined hunger, far from understood by himself, but
having vaguely for its object clearance and atonement and personal
purity even, had begun to grow, and move within him. The thought stung
him with keen self-contempt, yet think he must and did, that a woman
might be spotted not a little, and yet be good enough for him in the
eyes of retributive justice. He saw plainly that his treatment of his
wife, knowing what he did of himself, was a far worse shame than any
fault of which a girl, such as Juliet was at the time, could have been
guilty. And with that, for all that he believed it utterly in vain, his
longing after the love he had lost, grew and grew, ever passing over
into sickening despair, and then springing afresh; he longed for Juliet
as she had prayed to him--as the only power that could make him clean;
it seemed somehow as if she could even help him in his repentance for
the wrong done to Amanda's mother. The pride of the Pharisee was gone,
the dignity of the husband had vanished, and his soul longed after the
love that covers a multitude of sins, as the air in which alone his
spirit could breathe and live and find room. I set it down briefly: the
change passed upon him by many degrees, with countless alternations of
mood and feeling, and without the smallest conscious change of opinion.

The rest of the day after receiving Faber's communication, poor Mr.
Drake roamed about like one on the verge of insanity, struggling to
retain lawful dominion over his thoughts. At times he was lost in
apprehensive melancholy, at times roused to such fierce anger that he
had to restrain himself from audible malediction. The following day
Dorothy would have sent for Faber, for he had a worse attack of the
fever than ever before, but he declared that the man should never again
cross his threshold.