I laughed bitterly to myself, and seemed to find in Wolf Larsen's forbidding philosophy a more adequate explanation of life than I found in my own.
And I was frightened when I became conscious of the trend of my thought.
The continual brutality around me was degenerative in its effect.

It bid fair to destroy for me all that was best and brightest in life.

My reason dictated that the beating Thomas Mugridge had received was an ill thing, and yet for the life of me I could not prevent my soul joying in it.

And even while I was oppressed by the enormity of my sin,--for sin it was,--I chuckled with an insane delight.

I was no longer Humphrey Van Weyden.