The Bad Seed

by William March

But in this he was mistaken, as we shall see in time, for Rhoda was able to put into action the things that he could only turn over in his mind as fantasies.

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It seemed to her suddenly that violence was an inescapable factor of the heart, perhaps the most important factor of all—an ineradicable thing that lay, like a bad seed, behind kindness, behind compassion, behind the embrace of love itself. Sometimes it lay deeply hidden, sometimes it lay close to the surface; but always it was there, ready to appear, under the right conditions, in all its irrational dreadfulness.

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He would have been surprised to know that, in a sense, he was in love with the little girl, and that his persecution of her, his nagging concern with everything she did, was part of a perverse and frightened courtship.

guilt, when you examined it dispassionately, could be seen to be only a painful form of pride.

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We are taught from the beginning that the human impulses we have are shameful and degrading, that man himself is entirely vile, that his very birth is the end result of a furtive sin to be wailed over and atoned somehow.

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kind. None had any conception of human morality; none was able to understand loyalty, affection, gratitude, or love; they were all cold, pitiless, and entirely selfish. Perhaps

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think. In the first place, good people are rarely suspicious. They cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing; usually they accept the undramatic solution as the correct one, and let matters rest there.

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