I was born into a wealthy family and had every advantage a man could ask for. I was intelligent, hardworking, and eager to earn the respect of good and respectable people. From the outside, my future seemed certain. I should have grown into an honorable and successful man.
But I had one weakness.
I loved having fun.
There was nothing especially terrible about my pleasures. They were simply more carefree and undisciplined than a man of my position was expected to enjoy. The problem was that I desperately wanted to appear serious and respectable in public.
So I began hiding the things I enjoyed.
As I grew older and started thinking seriously about my life, I realized that I had already divided myself into two separate lives. One was the respectable Dr. Jekyll whom everyone knew. The other was the private man who secretly enjoyed pleasures that I was ashamed to admit.
Many men would have openly admitted to such behavior. I could not.
Because I had set such high standards for myself, I felt almost sick with shame whenever I broke them.
Looking back, I believe it was not the wickedness of my pleasures alone that ruined me. It was the enormous gap between what I expected myself to be and what I secretly wanted to be.
I began thinking deeply about human nature.
Why should a man contain both good and evil?
Why should the same person be forced to carry both?
I was not a hypocrite in the ordinary sense. Both sides of me were real. When I behaved respectably during the day, I was genuinely sincere. And when I gave myself over to pleasure and shame at night, that was also genuinely me.
My scientific studies made me think about this even more.
I was becoming fascinated by strange and mysterious questions about the human mind and spirit. Every day, my scientific thinking and my moral struggles brought me closer to one terrible idea.
A man is not truly one person.
He is two.
I say two because that was as far as my own knowledge went. Perhaps others will discover more. Perhaps someday people will understand human nature as a collection of many separate personalities and impulses.
But in my own life, I discovered the basic division between good and evil.
I realized that I was not simply a good man who sometimes did bad things.
I was both.
And for years, I dreamed about separating those two sides.
I imagined how wonderful it would be if the good and evil parts of me could live in completely different bodies.
The evil side could pursue whatever pleasures it wanted without damaging the good man’s reputation.
The good side could live honestly, do good, and never again suffer shame because of the other.
Why, I wondered, should these two opposite parts be forced to live inside the same person?
Why couldn’t they be separated?
That was the question that eventually led me to my experiment.
My scientific work began to give me a possible answer.
I discovered that the human body, which seems so solid and permanent, is actually far more fragile and changeable than we imagine. Certain substances could disturb the physical body in extraordinary ways, almost as if the body were only a temporary covering for something deeper.
I eventually discovered a way to separate the different forces within me.
I created a drug that could suppress one side of my nature and bring another side forward.
I hesitated for a long time before testing it.
I knew I might die.
A substance powerful enough to disturb a person’s very identity could easily destroy him if the dose were wrong or if the experiment went badly.
But the possibility of such a discovery was too tempting.
I had already prepared most of the mixture. I bought a large quantity of a particular chemical salt from a wholesale chemist. It was the final ingredient I needed.
Then, late one terrible night, I mixed everything together.
The liquid boiled and smoked inside the glass.
When it finally settled, I gathered my courage and drank it.
The pain was horrible.
My bones seemed to grind against each other. I became violently sick. My whole body felt as if it were being torn apart.
It was a kind of horror that seemed worse than anything a person could experience in either birth or death.
Then, just as suddenly, the pain began to fade.
I slowly returned to consciousness as if waking from a terrible illness.
But everything felt different.
There was something completely new in my body.
And strangely, it felt wonderful.
I felt younger.
Lighter.
Happier.
Inside my mind, I felt a wild excitement. Sensual thoughts rushed through me. My sense of duty seemed to disappear. I felt free from every moral rule that had controlled me.
And I immediately understood what had happened.
I had become more wicked than I had ever been before.
Ten times more wicked.
I had released the evil that had always existed inside me.
And I loved it.
I stretched out my hands, enjoying the strange freshness of my new body.
Then I suddenly noticed something.
I was shorter.
There was no mirror in my room at that time. The mirror that stood there later had been placed there specifically for these transformations.
It was already deep into the night.
Everyone in the house was asleep.
I decided to risk walking to my bedroom in my new form.
I crossed the yard beneath the stars. For a moment, I imagined that the stars themselves were staring down at me, seeing a creature unlike anything they had ever witnessed.
I moved quietly through the corridors.
I felt like a stranger inside my own home.
Then I reached my room.
And for the first time, I saw the face of Edward Hyde.
I can only explain what happened through theory, because even now I cannot know everything with certainty.
The evil part of me was less developed than the good part. My life had been mostly filled with discipline, hard work, virtue, and self-control. My evil side had been used far less often.
So Edward Hyde was smaller, thinner, and younger than Henry Jekyll.
The difference was also visible in our faces.
Goodness had shaped Jekyll’s face.
Evil had marked Hyde’s.
The evil within him seemed to have left behind something twisted and decayed.
Yet when I saw that ugly face in the mirror, I did not feel disgust.
I welcomed it.
Because it was me.
It felt completely natural.
In fact, Hyde’s face seemed more honest than my own. My face had always shown a mixture of different feelings and desires. Hyde’s face showed only one thing.
Evil.
Later, I noticed that whenever I appeared as Hyde, people instinctively recoiled from me. They could not explain why, but something about me frightened them.
I believe I understand the reason now.
Every ordinary human being is a mixture of good and evil.
Edward Hyde was different.
He was evil without anything to balance it.
I looked at myself in the mirror for only a moment.
There was still one final question.
Had I destroyed Henry Jekyll forever?
I hurried back to my laboratory, prepared the mixture again, and drank it.
The agony came once more.
Then it was over.
I opened my eyes and saw the face, body, and height of Henry Jekyll.
That night, I stood at the crossroads that would decide the rest of my life.
If I had approached my discovery with a better purpose, everything might have been different.
If I had used the drug while filled with noble or religious intentions, perhaps I would have created an angel instead of a monster.
The drug itself was not evil.
It did not choose good or evil.
It simply opened the door.
Whatever was inside me came rushing out.
That night, my goodness was asleep.
My evil side, strengthened by ambition and desire, was awake.
And what emerged was Edward Hyde.
From that moment on, I had two bodies and two personalities.
But only one of them was completely evil.
The other was still Henry Jekyll—the complicated man I had always been, a man who wanted to improve himself but had already begun to doubt whether he ever could.
Everything was moving in the wrong direction.
Even then, I had not completely given up my love of pleasure.
I still enjoyed myself from time to time.
But my pleasures were not respectable, and I was a well-known man whose reputation mattered greatly. I was also getting older.
My secret life was becoming harder and harder to maintain.
That was where my new power became irresistible.
All I had to do was drink the drug.
In an instant, the respectable Dr. Jekyll disappeared.
Edward Hyde took his place.
I thought the idea was almost funny.
So I carefully prepared everything.
I rented a house in Soho—the house where Hyde was eventually discovered by the police. I hired a housekeeper whom I knew to be quiet and completely without scruples.
Then I told my servants that a man named Edward Hyde would have complete freedom to come and go at my house in the square.
I even appeared as Hyde from time to time so the servants would become familiar with him.
I also changed my will, the same will that had caused you so much concern.
If anything happened to Dr. Jekyll, Edward Hyde would inherit everything.
I thought I had protected myself from every possible danger.
Then I began enjoying the strange freedom my position gave me.
Men had hired criminals before to commit their crimes while keeping their own names and reputations clean.
But I was the first man who could use another identity to pursue his own pleasures.
In public, I could walk around as a respectable doctor.
Then, within seconds, I could strip off that identity and become Hyde.
And I believed I was completely safe.
Think about it.
As far as the world was concerned, Edward Hyde did not really exist.
If Hyde did something terrible, I only had to escape into my laboratory, mix the drug, drink it, and wait a few moments.
Edward Hyde would disappear like a mark of breath on a mirror.
And in his place would be Henry Jekyll, sitting peacefully at home and laughing at the idea that anyone could suspect him.
At first, the pleasures I pursued as Hyde were simply disgraceful.
But they soon became something much worse.
Hyde’s desires were monstrous.
When I returned from these adventures, I was often shocked by what he had done.
The creature I had created from my own soul was naturally cruel and selfish. He cared only about himself. He could enjoy another person’s suffering without the slightest feeling of pity.
He was as cold and merciless as stone.
Sometimes Henry Jekyll was horrified by Hyde’s actions.
But the strange arrangement slowly weakened my conscience.
After all, I told myself, Hyde had done it.
Not Jekyll.
Jekyll was still respectable.
Jekyll could return to his normal life and even try to repair the damage Hyde had caused.
So my conscience gradually fell asleep.
I will not describe every terrible thing I allowed Hyde to do.
I only want to explain the warnings I ignored and the steps that eventually led to my punishment.
Once, Hyde attacked a child.
A passer-by became furious and confronted him. I later recognized that man as one of your relatives.
The child’s family joined him, and for a moment I feared they might kill me.
To calm them down, Hyde had to take them to the door and pay them compensation with a cheque written in Henry Jekyll’s name.
I quickly found a way to prevent such a problem from happening again.
I opened a bank account under Edward Hyde’s name.
Then I taught Hyde how to imitate my handwriting.
I thought I had made myself completely safe.
About two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I went out on another one of Hyde’s adventures.
I returned very late.
The next morning, I woke up in bed with a strange feeling.
I looked around my room.
Everything was familiar.
The furniture.
The curtains.
The large proportions of the room.
The mahogany bed.
Yet I could not shake the feeling that I was actually in the small room in Soho where Hyde slept.
I smiled at myself.
I thought I was simply confused after a long night.
Then I looked at my hand.
Henry Jekyll’s hand was large, strong, white, and well shaped—the hand of a professional man.
But the hand lying on my bed was completely different.
It was thin.
The veins stood out.
The knuckles were prominent.
The skin was dark.
Thick black hair covered it.
It was Edward Hyde’s hand.
I stared at it for almost half a minute.
At first, I was simply too shocked to understand what I was seeing.
Then terror struck me.
I jumped out of bed and ran to the mirror.
The sight almost froze my blood.
I had gone to sleep as Henry Jekyll.
I had awakened as Edward Hyde.
How had this happened?
And more importantly, how could I change back?
It was already morning.
The servants were awake.
My drugs were locked inside the laboratory.
To reach them, I would have to go downstairs, through the back passage, across the courtyard, and through the anatomy room.
I was standing there in horror.
I could perhaps hide my face.
But how could I hide my changed height?
Then, suddenly, I remembered something that gave me hope.
The servants were already accustomed to Edward Hyde entering and leaving the house.
I quickly dressed in clothes large enough to fit me as well as possible.
Then I walked through the house.
Bradshaw stared at me in shock. He clearly could not understand why Mr. Hyde was there so early in the morning and dressed so strangely.
Ten minutes later, I had returned to the body of Dr. Jekyll.
I sat down and pretended to eat breakfast.
But I had almost no appetite.
That strange transformation felt like a warning written on a wall by an invisible hand.
It seemed to be announcing my judgment.
For the first time, I seriously considered what my double life might eventually become.
Hyde had been growing stronger.
I had begun to feel as though his body itself were becoming larger.
Whenever I became Hyde, I seemed to have more energy and more physical strength.
Then I understood the danger.
If this continued, the balance between my two natures might be destroyed.
I might lose the ability to change voluntarily.
Edward Hyde might become my permanent identity.
The drug had never worked perfectly.
Early in my experiments, it had failed completely once.
Later, I had sometimes needed twice the original dose.
Once, I had even needed three times the amount, and that nearly killed me.
Until then, I had considered these failures the only real danger.
Now I understood what they meant.
At first, the difficult part had been becoming Hyde.
Now the difficulty was slowly shifting.
Returning to Jekyll was becoming harder.
Everything pointed toward the same terrible conclusion.
I was losing control of my original self.
I was becoming Hyde.
I finally realized that I had to choose between them.
We shared memories, but almost everything else was different.
Jekyll could enjoy Hyde’s pleasures and adventures, sometimes with shame and sometimes with excitement.
But Hyde barely cared about Jekyll.
To him, Jekyll was little more than a hiding place.
Jekyll cared about Hyde almost like a father cares about a child.
Hyde cared about Jekyll with the cold indifference of a son who wants nothing from his father.
If I chose Jekyll, I would have to give up the pleasures I had secretly enjoyed for years.
If I chose Hyde, I would lose everything else—my friends, my reputation, my career, my hopes, and my place in society.
The choice seemed unfair.
But there was another difference.
Jekyll would suffer terribly without Hyde’s pleasures.
Hyde would not even understand what he had lost.
The struggle was as old as humanity itself.
Every tempted person faces some version of the same battle between desire and conscience.
And I made the same choice that most people make.
I chose the better side.
But I did not have the strength to remain faithful to it.
Yes, I chose Henry Jekyll.
I chose the older doctor surrounded by friends and still holding onto respectable hopes for the future.
I said goodbye to Hyde’s freedom.
I gave up his youthful energy, his light footsteps, his reckless impulses, and his secret pleasures.
But perhaps I never truly meant to give him up completely.
I did not sell the house in Soho.
I did not destroy Hyde’s clothes.
I kept everything ready in my laboratory.
For two months, however, I kept my promise.
I lived more strictly than I ever had before.
And I enjoyed the peace that came with having a clear conscience.
But eventually, the memory of fear faded.
The satisfaction of behaving well became ordinary.
Then the old desires returned.
I began feeling Hyde struggling inside me, demanding freedom.
Finally, during a moment of moral weakness, I prepared the drug again.
And I drank it.
I had underestimated Hyde.
I had spent years thinking about the danger of my actions, but I had not understood how completely Hyde lacked conscience.
My devil had been locked away for too long.
When I released him, he came out roaring.
Even before I finished drinking the drug, I could feel a stronger and more violent desire to do evil.
That was probably why I became so violently impatient with my next victim.
No morally sane person could have committed such a crime for such a small reason.
But I had stripped away the instincts that normally keep human beings under control.
For me, the smallest temptation had become enough.
Hell seemed to awaken inside me.
I attacked the helpless man with terrible pleasure.
I enjoyed every blow.
I did not stop until exhaustion began to overcome my fury.
Then, at the height of my madness, a sudden wave of terror struck me.
The fog in my mind cleared.
I understood that my life was now in danger.
I ran from the scene.
Part of me was proud of what I had done.
Another part was terrified.
My desire to do evil had been satisfied, but my desire to stay alive had become stronger than ever.
I ran to the house in Soho and destroyed my papers.
Then I went into the streets.
I was filled with two opposite emotions.
I was thrilled by my crime.
I was already imagining what I might do next.
And yet I was terrified that someone was following me.
Hyde almost seemed to celebrate as he prepared the drug.
He drank it as though raising a toast to the dead man.
The transformation had barely finished tearing through his body when Henry Jekyll returned.
I fell to my knees, tears streaming down my face.
I raised my hands to God and thanked Him for being alive.
For the first time, I saw my entire life clearly.
I remembered myself as a child, walking beside my father.
I remembered the discipline of my professional life.
I remembered all the sacrifices I had made.
And then I saw how everything had led me back to the horror of that night.
I wanted to scream.
I cried and prayed, trying desperately to push away the terrible images filling my mind.
But Hyde’s ugly face remained inside me.
As my remorse slowly weakened, another feeling appeared.
Relief.
I finally understood what I had to do.
Hyde could never be allowed to exist again.
Whether I wanted it or not, I would have to remain Henry Jekyll.
And I was strangely grateful for that.
I willingly accepted the restrictions of an ordinary human life.
I locked the door through which I had so often entered and left as Hyde.
Then I destroyed the key beneath my heel.
The next day, I learned that the murder had become public.
Everyone knew Hyde was responsible.
And the victim had been a highly respected man.
It was not merely a crime.
It had been a terrible mistake.
I think I was actually glad to hear the news.
The threat of the gallows would help keep me safe.
Jekyll had become my refuge.
If Hyde appeared for even a moment, the whole world would rise against him.
I decided to spend the rest of my life making up for what I had done.
And I can honestly say that I did some good.
You know how hard I worked during the final months of that year to help people who were suffering.
I helped many people.
My days became peaceful.
At times, I was almost happy.
I cannot honestly say that I grew tired of that good life.
In fact, I enjoyed it more as time passed.
But the division inside me remained.
As my guilt slowly faded, the darker side of me began demanding freedom again.
I did not dream of bringing Hyde back.
The very thought terrified me.
Instead, I began allowing myself small secret sins as Henry Jekyll.
I tried to convince myself that I was only an ordinary man giving in to ordinary temptation.
Eventually, I failed.
There is an end to everything.
Even the largest container eventually becomes full.
That small return to evil finally destroyed the balance inside me.
And strangely, I was not frightened.
The fall seemed natural.
It felt like returning to the old life I had lived before discovering the drug.
It happened on a clear January day.
The frost had melted, leaving the ground wet, but the sky was bright and cloudless.
Regent’s Park was full of the sounds of winter birds and the fresh smell of early spring.
I sat on a bench in the sunlight.
The animal inside me remembered its old pleasures.
My better side was sleepy and already promising that I would regret whatever I did later.
But I was not ready to stop myself.
I thought about how ordinary I was.
I was no worse than the people around me.
In fact, I compared myself favorably with them.
I thought about how much good I had done and how cruelly other people ignored those in need.
I smiled at the thought.
And at that exact moment, something terrible happened.
A wave of sickness came over me.
I felt nauseous.
I began shaking violently.
Then it passed.
I was left weak and exhausted.
As the weakness faded, I noticed that my thoughts were changing.
I felt bolder.
I no longer cared about danger.
My sense of duty was disappearing.
I looked down.
My clothes were hanging loosely around my shrinking body.
The hand resting on my knee was thin, hairy, and covered with veins.
I had become Edward Hyde again.
Only moments earlier, I had been a respected and wealthy man.
People loved me.
My place at the dining table was waiting for me at home.
Now I was hunted by everyone.
I had no home.
I was a known murderer.
And the gallows were waiting for me.
My mind was shaken, but I could still think.
I had noticed before that Hyde’s mind seemed sharper than Jekyll’s.
His instincts were faster.
His energy was more intense.
So while Jekyll might have collapsed in panic, Hyde immediately focused on survival.
My drugs were inside my laboratory.
But how could I reach them?
That was the problem.
I held my head in my hands and thought.
The laboratory door was locked.
If I tried to enter through the house, my own servants would recognize me and send me to the police.
I needed someone else’s help.
Then I thought of Dr. Lanyon.
But how could I reach him?
How could I persuade him to help me?
Even if I avoided the police in the streets, how could an unknown and frightening stranger convince the famous Dr. Lanyon to break into Dr. Jekyll’s study and retrieve his colleague’s drugs?
Then I remembered something.
A part of Henry Jekyll still remained with me.
I could write in my own handwriting.
Once that idea came to me, I knew what to do.
I straightened my clothes as best I could.
Then I stopped a passing cab and ordered the driver to take me to a hotel in Portland Street whose name I remembered.
The sight of me must have been ridiculous.
My clothes did not fit.
My body was much smaller than they were meant for.
But there was nothing funny about what was happening to me.
The driver could not hide his laughter.
I glared at him with such violent fury that his smile disappeared.
It was fortunate for him.
If he had laughed for another moment, I might have pulled him from his seat and killed him.
When I entered the hotel, the staff took one look at my face and became frightened.
They did not speak to each other.
They simply obeyed me.
They gave me a private room and brought me everything I needed to write.
Hyde in danger was a creature I had never known before.
He was consumed by rage.
He was ready to kill.
He wanted to hurt someone.
Yet he was also intelligent.
With enormous effort, he controlled himself.
He wrote two important letters.
One was for Lanyon.
The other was for Poole.
He ordered both letters to be registered so he could have proof that they had been sent.
Then he spent the entire day sitting beside the fire in the private room.
He bit his nails.
He ate dinner alone.
The waiter was visibly terrified whenever he came near.
When night finally arrived, Hyde left the hotel in a closed cab.
He rode around the city, going from one street to another.
I say “he” because I can hardly call him “I.”
That creature had almost nothing human left in him.
Only fear and hatred remained.
Eventually, Hyde thought the driver was becoming suspicious.
He paid him and got out.
Then he walked through the dark streets in his badly fitting clothes, an obvious figure among the night crowds.
Fear and hatred raged inside him.
He walked quickly.
He kept looking behind him.
He muttered to himself.
He avoided the busy streets.
He counted the minutes until midnight.
At one point, a woman approached him.
I think she was trying to sell him a box of matches.
Hyde struck her in the face.
She ran away.
When I finally came back to myself at Lanyon’s house, the horror on my old friend’s face affected me.
But it was nothing compared with the horror I felt when I remembered what had happened that day.
Something inside me had changed.
I was no longer mainly afraid of being hanged.
I was terrified of being Hyde.
I barely understood Lanyon’s condemnation.
It felt like a dream.
I returned home almost as if I were sleepwalking.
I went to bed.
After the exhaustion of that terrible day, I fell into a deep sleep.
Even the nightmares could not fully wake me.
In the morning, I was weak and shaken, but strangely refreshed.
I still hated and feared the creature inside me.
I had not forgotten the dangers of the day before.
But I was home again.
I had access to my drugs.
I had escaped.
And my gratitude was almost as powerful as my hope.
After breakfast, I walked peacefully across the courtyard.
I enjoyed the cold morning air.
Then the familiar sensations suddenly seized me.
I barely had enough time to reach my laboratory before Hyde took control again.
This time, I needed twice the normal dose to become Jekyll again.
And only six hours later, the transformation began again.
I had to take the drug once more.
From that day forward, becoming Jekyll required enormous effort.
I could remain myself only when the drug was actively working.
At any time, day or night, I might feel the warning shudder that meant Hyde was coming.
And if I slept—even if I merely nodded off in a chair—I always woke as Hyde.
I could no longer sleep safely.
I could no longer rest.
Under the constant threat of transformation, and because I forced myself to remain awake, I became a weak and exhausted creature.
My body and mind were being consumed by fear.
I had only one thought.
The horror of my other self.
Whenever I slept or the drug lost its power, I would suddenly become Hyde.
The transformations were becoming easier and faster.
The pain was becoming weaker.
But what followed was worse.
My mind filled with terrifying images.
Hatred boiled inside me for no reason.
My body felt barely strong enough to contain the enormous energy raging inside it.
Hyde seemed to grow stronger as Jekyll became weaker.
And the hatred between us became equally strong.
Jekyll hated Hyde as a matter of survival.
I had finally seen what Hyde truly was.
He shared some part of my consciousness.
He was tied to me by life and death.
But beyond those connections, he seemed less like a living human being and more like something from hell.
That was the most horrifying part.
It was as if something shapeless and dead had somehow learned to speak, move, and commit evil.
And that thing was trapped inside my own body.
He was closer to me than any wife, closer than my own eyes.
He lived inside my flesh.
I could hear him muttering.
I could feel him struggling to be born.
Whenever I became weak, or whenever I slept, he took control and pushed me out of my own life.
Hyde’s hatred of Jekyll was different.
He feared the gallows.
That fear forced him to surrender his body to Jekyll again and again.
In a sense, every transformation back into Jekyll was a kind of temporary suicide for Hyde.
He hated it.
He hated the weakness into which Jekyll had fallen.
He hated knowing that Jekyll despised him.
So Hyde began playing cruel tricks on me.
He wrote blasphemous messages in my books using my own handwriting.
He burned letters.
He destroyed my father’s portrait.
If Hyde had not been afraid of death, he would probably have destroyed himself long ago simply to destroy me with him.
But Hyde loved life.
His desperation to survive was extraordinary.
When I think about how desperately he clung to existence, and how much he feared my ability to kill him by suicide, I almost feel sorry for him.
There is no point in describing the suffering any further.
No one has ever suffered what I have suffered.
That is enough.
Even terrible suffering can become familiar.
It did not become easier.
I simply became numb to it.
I accepted my hopeless situation.
Perhaps this punishment could have continued for years.
But then came the final disaster.
The chemical salt I had used in my original experiment was running out.
I had never bought a fresh supply since the beginning.
I ordered more.
I prepared the drug.
The mixture boiled.
The first change of color appeared.
But the second change never came.
I drank it.
Nothing happened.
It had no power.
You will learn from Poole how desperately I searched all over London for more of the original substance.
I found nothing.
I now believe the first batch of salt contained an unknown impurity.
That impurity must have been the thing that gave the drug its power.
About a week has passed.
I am now writing this statement using the very last of the original powder.
Unless some miracle occurs, this is the last time Henry Jekyll will ever think his own thoughts or see his own face in the mirror.
And even that face has changed so terribly.
I cannot delay much longer.
If Hyde changes me while I am writing, he will tear this confession to pieces.
But if enough time passes after I finish it, his selfish nature may save it.
Hyde only cares about what is happening to him at the moment.
Perhaps he will ignore these pages.
But the fate closing around both of us has already changed him.
In half an hour, I will become that hated creature again.
And this time, I may never return.
I know what will happen.
I will sit here shaking and crying.
Or I will pace around this room, listening desperately for every sound outside.
This room is my last refuge on earth.
Will Hyde eventually be captured and hanged?
Or will he find the courage to kill himself before that happens?
Only God knows.
And strangely, I no longer care.
This is my true moment of death.
Whatever happens afterward belongs to someone else.
So, as I put down my pen and prepare to seal this confession, I bring the life of the unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.