She became to me all
that Nature had been, and more. She expressed for me all that I had
sought to find diffused through Nature, and at the same time she stood
forth to me as an equal of my own kind, with as great a capacity for
life. At first I had a vision of our living and reigning together, so to
say, though the word may seem to you absurd; but I soon discovered that
there was a gulf fixed between us,--the gulf of the life I had lived;
she stood pure where I had stood a dozen years ago. So, gradually, she
subverted my whole scheme of life; more and more, without knowing it,
she made me see and judge myself with her eyes, till I felt altogether
abased before her. But that which finally stripped the veil from me, and
showed me myself as the hateful incarnation of relentlessly devouring
Self, was my influence upon her, which culminated in the event of last
night. Can you conceive how I was smitten and pierced with horror by the
discovery that rose on me like a nightmare, that even on her sweet,
pure, sumptuous life, I had unwittingly begun to prey? For that
discovery flung wide the door of the future and showed me what I would
become.
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