reason away doubts
that might possibly arise in matters of belief, especially about
miracles, which he generally wanted to explain in a natural way. He
could be exceedingly clever in his comparisons, and I used then to think
in this, as in much of the strong-willed expression of his face when he
talked, that I recognised Susanna's nature. The small, well-shaped hands
and the well-proportioned though not tall figure, she had evidently
inherited from her father, as also a certain quick movement of the head
when her words were to be made more impressive than usual. But Susanna
had in addition a warmth and impulsiveness, almost volcanic in their
nature, which struck me as foreign to the expression that lay in the
minister's cold, clear, intelligent eyes.

The minister praised me for my thoughtfulness, but repeated several
times, to my secret humiliation, that I had a way of furtively looking
down that I must try to get rid of. He doubtless thought that I was
excessively embarrassed, perhaps, too, that I suffered under the
consciousness of my father's position with regard to him.

However that may be, his cold, piercing, blue or grey eyes sometimes
looked at me as if they saw right through me and cut me up like an
orange, right into my secret with Susanna. I felt like a traitor who was
betraying his confidence, and I pictured to myself what he would think
of me one day, when he came to know all, and that during his instruction
on the subject of my eternal happiness I could have sat before him so
false and bold. I became more and more convinced during the lessons on
the Explanation, [Of Luther's Catechism] that my relations with Susanna,
as long as they were kept a secret from her parents, were wrong, and now
I was going, with this deliberate sin on my conscience, coolly and with
premeditation to kneel at the Lord's Table.

These scruples haunted me at home, too, and at last became a real
martyrdom to me. All sin, said the Explanation, could be forgiven,
except sin against the Holy Ghost.

The deeper my imagination was plunged in meditation on this mysterious
crime against Heaven, which was beyond the limits of pardon and could
not be forgiven, the higher rose the torturing anxiety in my mind lest
the very sin that I was now calmly and deliberately about to commit, was
of that kind.

My hesitation was especially on the subject of the Sacrament, which I
now boldly, and with full purpose, intended to desecrate, by conceal