At least she had been innocent once. She was clean and good--really
and truly the candid child that she had never ceased to seem to
be--when that sliming, crawling reptile first got his coils about her.
As he thought of the maddening reality, his imagination made pictures
that printed themselves, deep and indelible, on the soft recording
surfaces of his brain. Henceforth, so long as blood pumped, nerves
worked, and cells and fibers held to their shape, he would see these
pictures--must see them each time that chance stirred his memory of
the facts for which they stood as emblems.
And with his rage against the man came more and more detestation of
the crime itself. At the very beginning it had no possible excuse in
honest love. There was nothing belonging to it of nature's grand
instinct. It had not the inexorable brutality of primitive passion.
Here was an old, or an elderly man, not driven by the force of normal,
full-blooded desire, but craftily plotting, treacherously abusing his
power, because he was rotten with impure whims--befouling youth and
innocence just to obtain a few faint voluptuous thrills.
Then the brain-pictures flashed out with torturing clearness, and Dale
saw the criminal renewing the outrage after long years.
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