ery great, for on reading it I felt that a good deal
that I had written to you about the salvation of your soul was inspired,
not by any pure fear that I had done anything that might lose a soul to
God, but by pure selfishness. I did not dare to write boldly that I
loved yourself, and would always love you; I wore a mask and a disguise,
and in order to come to terms with myself I feel it necessary to confess
to you; otherwise all the suffering I have endured would be wasted.

'But this is not all my confession; worse still remains. I have
discovered that when I spoke against you in church, and said things that
caused you to leave the parish, I did not do so, as I thought, because I
believed that the morality of my parish must be maintained at any cost.
I know now that jealousy--yes, sensual jealousy--prompted me. And when I
went to my sisters to ask them to appoint you to the post of
music-teacher in their school, I did not do so for their sake, but for
my own, because I wished to have you back in the parish. But I do not
wish you to think that when I wrote about atonement I wrote what I knew
to be untrue. I did not; the truth was hidden from me. Nor did I wish to
get you back to the parish in order that I might gratify my passion. All
these things were very vague, and I didn't understand myself until now.
I never had any experience of life till I met you. And is it not curious
that one should know so little of one's self, for I might have gone down
to my grave without knowing how false I was at heart, if I had not been
stricken down with a great illness.

'One day, Catherine told me that the lake was frozen over, and, as I had
been within doors a long while, she advised me to go out and see the
boys sliding on the ice. Her advice put an idea into my head, that I
might take out my skates and skate recklessly without trying to avoid
the deeper portions where the ice was likely to be thin, for I was weary
of life, and knowing that I could not go back upon the past, and that no
one would ever love me, I wished to bring my suffering to an end. You
will wonder why I did not think of the sufferings that I might have
earned for myself in the next world. I had suffered so much that I could
think of nothing but the present moment. God was good, and he saved me,
for as I stood irresolute before a piece of ice which I knew wouldn't
bear me, I felt a great sickness creeping over me. I returned home, and
for several days the doctor