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[jays]

I want to know the meaning of the bold part especailly "account to ~ for~" in the following passage ( The Black Cat, Adgar Allen Poe)
--------- the following ------------
When I first beheld this apparition - for I could scarcely regard it as less - my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been immediately filled by the crowd - by some one of whom the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.
Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fall to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came back into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me, among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place.

[CP]

The whole sentence means:

"Even though I quickly figured out this fact [how the ghostly cat became that way and ended up in my room] in terms of reason, if not in terms of conscience, it nevertheless made a deep impression on my imagination."

In other words:

"Although I could understand how it came to be factually, I really didn't understand how someone could do such a thing in good conscience, and it greatly affected my imagination in a disturbing way."

By the way, it's "fail," not "fall," in the last clause of the sentence.

Poe is not easy, but his stories are worth the effort, aren't they?
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