rent of disordered
sensual images running like a mill-race in my fancy, a solution of the
bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul.
I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked,
tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought,
in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my
hands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and in the act I
was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature.

There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands beside
me as I write was brought there later on, and for the very purpose of
these transformations. The night, however, was far gone into the
morning--the morning, black as it was, was nearly ripe for the
conception of the day--the inmates of my house were locked in the most
rigorous hours of slumber; and I determined, flushed as I was with hope
and triumph, to venture in my new shape as far as to my bedroom. I
crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me, I
could have thought, with wonder, the first creature of that sort that
their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole through
the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and, coming to my room, I saw
for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.

I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but
that which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my nature, to
which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust and
less developed than the good which I had just deposed. Again, in the
course of my life, which had been, after all, nine-tenths a life of
effort, virtue, and control, it had been much less exercised and much
less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde
was so much smaller, slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as
good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and
plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still
believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint
of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the
glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome.
This too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a
livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than
the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to
call mine. And in so far I