I went to brush my hair aside from
my wet forehead, and noticed, parenthetically, that my hand was soiled
with blood, where my nails had bitten the palm. With the death of love
and faith in me had come an immense capacity for cunning, concealment
and cruelty, the trinity of power that abides in certain beasts. Came
also a dull purpose, growing each moment in strength.
I do not remember that I felt a single throe of expiring love, the love
that had filled my heart to the brim. An immeasurable nausea of disgust
overcame me, to the exclusion of other ideas, a fixed sense that a thing
so dangerous in its angelic disguise, so poisonous and loathsome, must
not remain on earth; this jest of Satan must be removed lest it
contaminate all with whom it came in contact. Yet did there live any
being uncontaminated already? Were not all vile, even as she was vile?
My brain reeled. Surely to the eyes of any beholder, she was the
incarnation of purity! That which animated me was not a personal sense
of grievance so much as the inborn, natural desire one feels to
exterminate a pest, to crush a reptile, the more dangerous that it
crawls through flowers to kill. As I have said, I felt power for
strategy, unknown to my nature before, rising in me. Certain ideas were
suggested to me, on which I acted with coolness and promptness. I felt
like a minister of God's will, charged with destruction.
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