Often,
throughout the day, his reproaching conscience had spoken within
him again and again. Often when he joined the little assembly on
the beach, he turned away his face in secret shame and
apprehension from Perrine and her father. Vainly, after gaining
the deck of the ship, did he try to meet the eye of Father Paul
as frankly, as readily, and as affectionately as others met it.
The burden of concealment seemed too heavy to be borne in the
presence of the priest--and yet, torment as it was, he still bore
it! But when he knelt with the rest of the congregation and saw
Perrine kneeling by his side--when he felt the calmness of the
solemn night and the still sea filling his heart--when the sounds
of the first prayers spoke with a dread spiritual language of
their own to his soul--then the remembrance of the confession
which he had neglected, and the terror of receiving unprepared
the sacrament which he knew would be offered to him--grew too
vivid to be endured; the sense that he merited no longer, though
once worthy of it, the confidence in his perfect truth and candor
placed in him by the woman with whom he was soon to stand before
the altar, overwhelmed him with shame: the mere act of kneeling
among that congregation, the passive accomplice by his silence
and secrecy, for aught he knew to the contrary, of a crime which
it was his bounden duty to denounce, appalled him as if he had
already committed sacrilege that could never be forgiven.
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