“The place was unoccupied, and when in imagination he tried to put one of the girls he knew there, he felt that it was quite impossible. Moreover, the memory of her refusal, and the part he had played in it, tormented him with shame. However much he told himself that he was not at all to blame in that matter, the memory of it, together with other shameful memories, made him start and blush. There had been in his past, as in that of every man, actions which he realized were bad, and for which his conscience ought to have tormented him; but the recollections of those bad actions did not torment him nearly as much as these trivial yet shameful memories. These wounds never closed up. And among these recollections stood the memory of her refusal and the pitiful rôle he must have played in the eyes of the others that evening,”
English