corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of
the city. He, I say I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing
human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. And when at last,
thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he discharged the cab
and ventured on foot, attired in his misfitting clothes, an object
marked out for observation, into the midst of the nocturnal passengers,
these two base passions raged within him like a tempest. He walked
fast, hunted by his fears, chattering to himself, skulking through the
less frequented thoroughfares, counting the minutes that still divided
him from midnight. Once a woman spoke to him, offering, I think, a box
of lights. He smote her in the face, and she fled.
When I came to myself at Lanyon s, the horror of my old friend perhaps
affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in the
sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon these hours. A
change had come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it
was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon s
condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came
home to my own house and got into bed. I slept after the prostration of
the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even the
nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke in the morning
shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and feared the thought
of the brute that slept within me, and I had not of course forgotten
the appalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home,
in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape
shone so strong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of
hope.
I was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast, drinking the
chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seized again with those
indescribable sensations that heralded the change; and I had but the
time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I was once again raging
and freezing with the passions of Hyde. It took on this occasion a
double dose to recall me to myself; and alas! six hours after, as I sat
looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be
re-administered. In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a
great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation
of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At all
hours of the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory
shudder; above all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair,
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