I walked to the end of the long room, as far as I
could go from the scene of my crime, and sat down on the great chest,
with my coffin, the cabinet, facing me in the distance. The first thing,
I think, that I grew conscious of, was dreariness. There was nothing
interesting anywhere. What should I do? There was nothing to do, nothing
to think about, not a book worth reading. Story was suddenly dried up at
its fountain. Life was a plain without water-brooks. If the sky was not
"a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours," it was nothing better
than a canopy of gray and blue. By degrees my thought settled on what I
had done, and in a moment I realized it as it was--a vile thing, and I
had lost my life for it! This is the nearest I can come to the expression
of what I felt. I was simply in despair. I had done wrong, and the world
had closed in upon me; the sky had come down and was crushing me! The lid
of my coffin was closed! I should come no more out!
But deliverance came speedily--and in how lovely a way! Into my thought,
not into the room, came my uncle! Present to my deepest consciousness, he
stood tall, loving, beautiful, sad. I read no rebuke in his countenance,
only sorrow that I had sinned, and sympathy with my suffering because of
my sin. Then first I knew that I had _wronged_ him in looking into his
drawer; then first I saw it was his being that made the thing I had done
an evil thing.
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