becomes conscientious. "His equivocation now turns
venomously upon him with the full-grown fang of a discovered lie." The
past came back to make the present unendurable. "The terror of being
judged sharpens the memory." Once more "he saw himself the banker's
clerk, as clever in figures as he was fluent in speech, and fond of
theological definition. He had striking experience in conviction and
sense of pardon; spoke in prayer-meeting and on religious platforms.
That was the time he would have chosen now to awake in and find the rest
of dream. He remembered his first moments of shrinking. They were
private and were filled with arguments--some of these taking the form of
prayer."

Private prayer--but "is private prayer necessarily candid? Does it
necessarily go to the roots of action? Private prayer is inaudible
speech, and speech is representative. Who can represent himself just as
he is, even in his own reflections?"

Bulstrode's course up to the time of his being suspected "had, he
thought, been sanctioned by remarkable providences, appearing to point
the way for him to be the agent in making the best use of a large
property." Providence would have him use for the glory of God the money
he had stolen. "Could it be for God's service that this fortune should
go to" its rightful owners, when its rightful owners were "a young woman
and her husband who were given up to the lightest pursuits, and might
scatter it abroad in triviality--people who seemed to lie outside the
path of remarkable providences?"

Bulstrode felt at times "that his action was unrighteous, but how could
he go back? He had mental exercises calling himself naught, laid hold on
redemption and went on in his course of instrumentality." He was
"carrying on two distinct lives"--a religious one and a wicked one. "His
religious activity could not be incompatible with his wicked business as
soon as he had argued himself into not feeling it incompatible."

"The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him. There may be
coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the
sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was
simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs,
and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into
satisfactory agreement with those beliefs."

And now Providence seemed to be taking sides against him. "A threatening
Providence--in other