And what is the
special miracle to which he is devoting himself at this moment, as you
have observed? Just this: the ruin of the thing he originally saved. It
is like this," he said, noting that Cuckoo was becoming puzzled and
confused, "Cresswell, by his influence, made Julian loathe sin. Coming
out of this trance, as I believe, a madman, he seeks to make his will
do something extraordinary. What shall he make it do? His eyes fall on
Julian, who is always with him, as you know. And he resolves to make
Julian love what he has taught him to loathe--sin, vice, degradation of
every kind. So he sets to work with all the cunning of a diseased mind,
and hour by hour, day by day, he works for this horrible end. At first he
is quiet and careful. But at last he becomes almost intoxicated as he
sees his own success. And he allows himself to be led into outbreaks of
triumph. One of those outbreaks you yourself seem to have witnessed. I
have witnessed another--on the night I dined alone with Cresswell, when
he killed the dog, Rip, and threw him out into the snow. Cresswell is
intoxicated with the mental intoxication of mania, at the degradation
into which his will has forced Julian, who had learnt to love him, to
think that everything he did must be right.
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