(continued)

There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to my evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul.  And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before I had made my discovery.  It was a fine, clear, January day, wet under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the Regent's Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with spring odours.  I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.  After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active good-will with the lazy cruelty of their neglect.  And at the very moment of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering.  These passed away, and left me faint; and then as in its turn faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation.  I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy.  I was once more Edward Hyde.  A moment before I had been safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved—the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.

My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly.  I have more than once observed that in my second character, my faculties seemed sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came about that, where Jekyll perhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment.  My drugs were in one of the presses of my cabinet; how was I to reach them?  That was the problem that (crushing my temples in my hands) I set myself to solve.  The laboratory door I had closed.  If I sought to enter by the house, my own servants would consign me to the gallows.  I saw I must employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon.  How was he to be reached? how persuaded?  Supposing that I escaped capture in the streets, how was I to make my way into his presence?  and how should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll?  Then I remembered that of my original character, one part remained to me: I could write my own hand; and once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way that I must follow became lighted up from end to end.

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