s to God. The veil of self-indulgence was
rent from head to foot, I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from
the days of childhood, when I had walked with my father's hand, and
through the self-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again
and again, with the same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of
the evening. I could have screamed aloud; I sought with tears and
prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images and sounds with
which my memory swarmed against me; and still, between the petitions,
the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul. As the acuteness of
this remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy. The
problem of my conduct was solved. Hyde was thenceforth impossible;
whether I would or not, I was now confined to the better part of my
existence; and oh how I rejoiced to think it! with what willing humility
I embraced anew the restrictions of natural life! with what sincere
renunciation I locked the door by which I had so often gone and come,
and ground the key under my heel!

The next day came the news that the murder had been overlooked, that the
guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim was a man
high in public estimation. It was not only a crime, it had been a tragic
folly. I think I was glad to know it; I think I was glad to have my
better impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the
scaffold. Jekyll was now my city of refuge; let but Hyde peep out an
instant, and the hands of all men would be raised to take and slay him.

I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with
honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know yourself how
earnestly in the last months of last year, I laboured to relieve
suffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the days
passed quietly, almost happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that I
wearied of this beneficent and innocent life; I think instead that I
daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was still cursed with my duality
of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower
side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl
for licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare idea of
that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person that I was
once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was as an
ordinary secret sinner that I at last fell before the assaults of
temptation.