It is very clear that he can be much more dark and scheming than he seems to be. That is illustrated by just how far he will go to possess Lolita - marrying her mother and then literally abducting her after her mother dies.
In addition, they both are tragic figures who never get what they really want. Humbert discovers he is capable of love, and that he loves Lolita, even when she is "passed her prime" at 17. He says to himself, "[a]nd I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imaged on earth, or hoped for anywhere else" (Nabokov 279). Humbert is capable of real love, or as real as it can be for him, at least, while Quilty seems to be an incarnation of the devil,...
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