At this moment he felt convinced, as he often had been, that the most atrocious of his crimes had been necessary and inevitable.

There was something grand and vast in his deeds of blood, and that--for he flattered himself he knew the female heart--must win her admiration, besides the awe and love she already felt.
During the night, at his waking, and in his bath, he had felt that she was as necessary to him as the breath of life and hope.

What he experienced was love as the poets had sung it.

How often had he laughed it to scorn, and boasted that he was armed against the arrows of Eros! Now, for the first time, he was aware of the anxious rapture, the ardent longing of which he had read in so many songs.

There stood the object of his passion.