I was thinking of revenge--revenge against the primary conditions
of my being. I was thinking of Nettie and her lover. I was firmly
resolved he should not have her--though I had to kill them both to
prevent it. I did not care what else might happen, if only that end
was ensured. All my thwarted passions had turned to rage. I would
have accepted eternal torment that night without a second thought,
to be certain of revenge. A hundred possibilities of action, a
hundred stormy situations, a whirl of violent schemes, chased one
another through my shamed, exasperated mind. The sole prospect I
could endure was of some gigantic, inexorably cruel vindication of
my humiliated self.

And Nettie? I loved Nettie still, but now with the intensest
jealousy, with the keen, unmeasuring hatred of wounded pride, and
baffled, passionate desire.



Section 2

As I came down the hill from Clayton Crest--for my shilling and
a penny only permitted my traveling by train as far as Two-Mile
Stone, and thence I had to walk over the hill--I remember very
vividly a little man with a shrill voice who was preaching under
a gas-lamp against a hoarding to a thin crowd of Sunday evening
loafers. He was a short man, bald, with a little fair curly beard
and hair and watery blue eyes, and he was preaching that the end
of the world drew near.

I think that is the first time I heard any one link the comet with