The Devil

Thinking thus of his mind, and his long-continued efforts to improve its powers, he felt: "To go and extinguish all this is an awful thing to have to do."

Still his determination was not altered. The mystery of that great pageant, the mental life of William Dale, could not be permitted to unfold itself any further. It must cease with a snap and a jerk, much as when the electric current becomes too strong for a small incandescent lamp and the bulb bursts, the filaments fuse, and all that the lamp was showing disappears in darkness.

Yes, darkness without a glimmer of hope.

The finger of God--one can't get away from it. If it pushes you toward the light, then rejoice exceedingly and with a loud voice; if it pushes you into the dark, then swallow your tongue and go silently. It seemed to Dale that he comprehended the whole scope and purport of his doom, and that God's tremendous logic made the justice of his doom unanswerable. He understood that the law which he had himself set up was to be binding now. He must execute himself, as he had executed Everard Barradine. It is for this, the hour of hopelessness and despair, that God has been waiting. Now it is God's good time. God has slowly taught him his worthlessness and infamy, so that he may die despairing.