Possibly, did he know
beforehand her nature, he would not love her, but, knowing it
only too late, he loves and curses; calls her the worst of names,
yet can not or will not tear himself free; after a fashion he
still calls love, he loves the demon, and hates her thralldom.
Happily Tom had not reached this depth of perdition; Sepia was
prudent for herself, and knew, none better, what she was about,
so far as the near future was concerned, therefore held him at
arm's length, where Tom basked in a light that was of hell--for
what is a hell, or a woman like Sepia, but an inverted creation?
His nature, in consequence, was in all directions dissolving. He
drank more and more strong drink, fitting fuel to such his
passion, and Sepia liked to see him approach with his eyes
blazing. There are not many women like her; she is a rare type--
but not, therefore, to be passed over in silence. It is little
consolation that the man-eating tiger is a rare animal, if one of
them be actually on the path; and to the philosopher a
possibility is a fact. But the true value of the study of
abnormal development is that, in the deepest sense, such
development is not abnormal at all, but the perfected result of
the laws that avenge law-breach. It is in and through such that
we get glimpses, down the gulf of a moral volcano, to the
infernal possibilities of the human--the lawless rot of that
which, in its _attainable_ idea, is nothing less than
divine, imagined, foreseen, cherished, and labored for, by the
Father of the human.
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