A villainously evil thought assailed him as he walked along. Were all his better actions only so many Pharisaic sops thrown one by one into the mouth of a Cerberus of selfishness, monstrous and insane? Was his “mythology” itself only a projection of such selfishness? He carried this sardonic thought like a demon-fox pressed against the pit of his stomach, for nearly a mile; and it was just as if the hard, opaque crystal-circle of his inmost identity were, under that fox’s black saliva, turning into something shapeless and nauseating, something that resembled a mass of floating frog-spawn.

“Come, you demon,” he said to himself at last, “my soul is going to remain intact, or it’s going to dissolve into air!”

He had reached the summit of Babylon Hill now; and precisely where he had first crossed that stile with Gerda, he stood at this moment, rending his nature in a desperate inward struggle.