For the first time she realised, still vaguely but with increasing
vividness, the hidden causes of her ruin and, still more plainly, the
horrible danger of Ernest Fielding.
He noticed her agitation, and a look of psychological curiosity came
into his eyes.
"Ah, but that is not all," he observed, smilingly. "That is nothing. We
all possess that faculty in a degree. The secret of my strength is my
ability to reject every element that is harmful or inessential to the
completion of my self. This did not come to me easily, nor without a
struggle. But now, looking back upon my life, many things become
transparent that were obscure even to me at the time. I can now follow
the fine-spun threads in the intricate web of my fate, and discover in
the wilderness of meshes a design, awful and grandly planned."
His voice shook with conviction, as he uttered these words. There was
something strangely gruesome in this man. It was thus that she had
pictured to herself the high-priest of some terrible and mysterious
religion, demanding a human sacrifice to appease the hunger of his god.
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