ing
the fact that I was deceiving the very person that would give it to me.
I tried in vain to dismiss these thoughts, or at any rate to put them
off, until the very last day before confirmation. My mind became every
day more uneasy, and in my imagination there arose thoughts that no
longer depended on my own will, and I stood dismayed before all the
visions and possibilities of hell's terror.

I dared not reassure myself by trying to get Susanna to talk about my
fears; for as long as she was ignorant that what was to be done was a
sin, she was not to blame; and rather than involve her with myself, I
would bear my burden alone. To reveal the whole thing at the last moment
to the stern minister would, of course, disclose our engagement, would
be an unbearable scandal for us both, and, as I thought, would only
result in my losing Susanna; and this I dared not risk without her
consent. The whole thing was thus knotted into an impossible ring, out
of which no escape seemed possible.

On the last two Mondays when I stood in the church while the minister
examined us, I often looked earnestly over at Susanna. She stood there,
bright, smiling and inattentive; she suspected nothing, and could give
no help.

During the days immediately before the confirmation my distress rose to
fever height, several times I was scarcely in my right mind, and felt
dreadfully unhappy. It seemed to me at last that I was actually throwing
away my eternal happiness for Susanna's sake. At night I started up from
terrifying dreams, in which I saw myself kneeling at the altar with
Susanna beside me--she looking so unsuspecting, so supernaturally
beautiful, while the minister stood with a face of thunder, as if he
knew that a soul would now be destroyed, and that, in the Communion, he
was carrying out God's vengeance. Another night I awoke with a fancy
that a scornful laugh came from under the bed, and with a conviction
that the Evil One lurked there, curled up like a great snake. I hid
myself with a beating heart under the down quilt, until I heard people
moving in the yard below in the morning, and then I ventured to fly from
the room.

It was Confirmation Day.

I stood at the glass that morning, before church-time, dressing myself
in my new clothes, in the "blue room," the room in which my mother had
been confined during the many years she was ill. I could see, through
the small-paned windows, boat after boat full of nicely-dressed
confirmation