Theodore Winthrop

“ Welcome, Robert Byng, to a new experiment of life! Come; you shall have revenge! You shall spoil the happiness of others, as your own is spoilt. We offer you the delicious honey of revenge. Sweet it is! ah, yes! the sweetest thing! You shall be one of us, — a tempter. Come!”
Such sounds seemed to me to issue from that dark room of Densdeth’s, to clothe themselves with those tones of his, which I had heard to- night echoed by the lips of the woman I longed to love, and to pervade the building, like a bat-winged flight of fiendish presences, claiming me as their comrade, whether I would or no. ”

“ The light of a large globe in the hall fell full upon her face as she spoke. All the eager, triumphal look of the early evening had departed. All the languid acquiescence was gone. Gone was even the faintest shadow of the expression that had turned my blood to ice. Pale horror — yes, no less than horror — seemed suddenly to have mastered her. Was she too now first learning the sin and misery of sin? ”

“ Was I not doing her foul injustice, and visiting it unfairly and cruelly upon her, that I had let myself be the comrade of ignoble and sensual people, — of Densdeth, to whom no purity was sacred?
Could she, my only intimate among women, be responsible for the lowering of my moral tone, so that I did not abhor, and had not been for these late months loathing, all contact with vice? It must be that a man who loves a pure and elevating woman will no more palter with evil. He is abashed by her whiteness of soul. ”