sense of being new and clean every whit. That
was what I wanted, just what I wanted. I am sure that you never had a
more sincere, more dead-in-earnest convert than I was."

He paused a moment, as if in mental contemplation, and then the words
dropped slowly from his lips, as a dim self-pitying smile rested on his
haggard face.

"I really think you would be sorry for me if you knew how very bitter was
my disappointment when I found that, these bright promises were only
figurative expressions which I had taken literally. Doubtless I should
not have fallen into such a ridiculous mistake if my great need had not
made my wishes fathers to my thoughts. Nobody was at all to blame but
myself; nobody at all. I'm blaming no one. Forgiving sins, I should have
known, is not blotting, them out. The blood of Christ only turns them red
instead of black. It leaves them in the record. It leaves them in the
memory. That day when I blotted my copybook at school, to have had the
teacher forgive me ever so kindly would not have made me feel the least
bit better so long as the blot was there. It wasn't any penalty from
without, but the hurt to my own pride which the spot made, that I wanted
taken away, so I might get heart to go on. Supposing one of you--and
you'll excuse me for asking you to put yourself a moment in my place--had
picked a pocket. Would it make a great deal of difference in your state
of mind that the person whose pocket you had picked kindly forgave you,
and declined to prosecute? Your offence against him was trifling, and
easily repaired. Your chief offence was against yourself, and that was
irreparable. No other person with his forgiveness can mediate between you
and yourself. Until you have been in such a fix, you can't imagine,
perhaps, how curiously impertinent it sounds to hear talk about somebody
else forgiving you for ruining yourself. It is like mocking."

The nine o'clock bell pealed out from the mill tower.

"I am trespassing on your kindness, but I have only a few more words to
say. The ancients had a beautiful fable about the water of Lethe, in
which the soul that was bathed straightway forgot all that was sad and
evil in its previous life; the most stained, disgraced, and mournful of
souls coming forth fresh, blithe, and bright as a baby's. I suppose my
absurd misunderstanding arose from a vague notion that the blood of
Christ had in it something like this virtue of Lethe water. Just think
how blessed a thi