And, as it is of the nature of man to hate those whom he fears, Elsley began to have dark and ugly feelings toward Lucia.

Instead of throwing them away, as a strong man would have done, he pampered them almost without meaning to do so.

For he let them run riot through his too vivid imagination, in the form of possible speeches, possible scenes, till he had looked and looked through a hundred thoughts which no man has a right to entertain for a moment.
True; he had entertained them with horror; but he ought not to have entertained them at all; he ought to have kicked them contemptuously out and back to the devil, from whence they came.

It may be again, that this is impossible to man; that prayer is the only refuge against that Walpurgis-dance of the witches and the fiends, which will, at hapless moments, whirl unbidden through a mortal brain: but Elsley did not pray.
So, leaving these fancies in his head too long, he soon became accustomed to them; and accustomed too, to the Nemesis which they bring with them; of chronic moodiness and concealed rage.

Day by day he was lashing himself up into fresh fury, and yet day by day he was becoming more careful to conceal that fury.