I cannot be wholly evil, he thought, if the approach of a pure angel gives me pleasure.  The touch of Ithuriel’s spear reveals deformity where it exists; in me it discloses beauty.

With her he could talk over the ordinary affairs of the day with calmness, though it is singular, considering the perfect confidence between them, that he never adverted to the communication of Holden, notwithstanding he knew it would possess the highest interest for her.  It betrays, perhaps, the weakened and diseased condition of a mind, wincing like an inflamed limb at the apprehension of a touch.

As the father listened and looked at his child, he felt transported into a region whither the demons could not come.  They could not endure her purity; they could not abide her brightness.  Her influence was a barrier mightier than the wall that encircled Paradise, and over which no evil thing could leap.  He therefore kept her by him as much as possible.  He manifested uneasiness when she was away.  His consolation and hope was Faith.  As the Roman prisoner drank life from the pure fountains to which he had given life, so Armstrong drew strength from the angelic spirit his own had kindled.

Yet was his daughter unconscious of the whole influence she exerted, nor had she even a distant apprehension of the chaos of his mind.  How would she have been startled could she have beheld the seething cauldron!  But into that, only the Eye that surveys all things could look.

Thus several days passed by.  An ordinary observer would have noticed no change in Armstrong, except that his appetite diminished, and he seemed restless.  Doctor Elmer and Faith both remarked these symptoms, but they did not alarm the former, though they grieved the latter.  Accustomed to repose unlimited confidence in the medical skill of the physician, and too modest to have an opinion adverse to that of another older than herself, and in a department wherewith he was familiar, and she had no knowledge except what was colored by filial fears and affection, and, perhaps, distorted by them out of its reasonable proportions, Faith went on from day to day, hoping that a favorable change would take place, and that she should have the happiness of seeing her dear father restored to his former cheerfulness.

It is painful to follow the sad moods of a noble mind, conscious of its aberrations, and yet unable to control them.  We have not the power of analysis capable of tracing it through all its windings, and exhibiting it naked to the view, and if we had, might shrink from the task, as from one inflicting unnecessary pain, both on the writer and the reader.  It is our object only so far to sketch the state of Armstrong’s mind, as to make his conduct intelligible.