And could such beings of cloudy fantasy, so near akin to nothingness,
give valid evidence against him, at the day of judgment? Be that the
case or not, there is reason to believe that one truly penitential tear
would have washed away each hateful picture, and left the canvas white as
snow. But Mr. Smith, at a prick of Conscience too keen to be endured,
bellowed aloud, with impatient agony, and suddenly discovered that his
three guests were gone. There he sat alone, a silver-haired and highly
venerated old man, in the rich gloom of the crimson-curtained room, with
no box of pictures on the table, but only a decanter of most excellent
Madeira. Yet his heart still seemed to fester with the venom of the
dagger.

Nevertheless, the unfortunate old gentleman might have argued the matter
with Conscience, and alleged many reasons wherefore she should not smite
him so pitilessly. Were we to take up his cause, it should be somewhat
in the following fashion: A scheme of guilt, till it be put in execution,
greatly resembles a train of incidents in a projected tale. The latter,
in order to produce a sense of reality in the reader's mind, must be
conceived with such proportionate strength by the author as to seem, in
the glow of fancy, more like truth, past, present, or to come, than
purely fiction. The prospective sinner, on the other hand, weaves his
plot of crime, but seldom or never feels a perfect certainty that it will
be executed. There is a dreaminess diffused about his thoughts; in a
dream, as it were, he strikes the death-blow into his victim's heart, and
starts to find an indelible blood-stain on his hand. Thus a novel-writer,
or a dramatist, in creating a villain of romance, and fitting him with
evil deeds, and the villain of actual life, in projecting crimes that
will be perpetrated, may almost meet each other, half-way between reality
and fancy. It is not until the crime is accomplished, that guilt
clinches its gripe upon the guilty heart, and claims it for its own.