I sat still and repeated a silent prayer. I got up at last, I felt afraid.
“Well?” He looked at me.
“Go!” said I, “confess. Everything passes, only the truth remains. Your children will understand, when they grow up, the nobility of your resolution.”
He left me that time as though he had made up his mind. Yet for more than a fortnight afterwards, he came to me every evening, still preparing himself, still unable to bring himself to the point. He made my heart ache. One day he would come determined and say fervently:
“I know it will be heaven for me, heaven, the moment I confess. Fourteen years I've been in hell. I want to suffer. I will take my punishment and begin to live. You can pass through the world doing wrong, but there's no turning back. Now I dare not love my neighbor nor even
