THE MORNING WATCH
213
The thing he had most dreaded to confess before, an impure act
which in its elaborateness had seemed merely the more exciting in the
doing and which was so neany unbearable to specify to another, and
a priest at that, that he had gravely considered the risk to his soul of
merely generalizing it: beside this new enormity-and twice over in one
night, and both times in the Presence-beside this, that ugly and
humiliating lustfulness seemed almost easy to tell of. But I'll tell it all the
same, he told himself grimly. Because if I don't I'm in mortal sin. No
I'll tell it because I did it and I hate to so much, and I don't care who
it is I have to tell it to either, I won't dodge whoever it turns out to
be and wait for another, not even if it's Father McPhetridge. I'll tell
the whole thing just the way it happened-way I thought it happened,
that is. I'll tell it all right. Because I've got to.
He looked proudly at the monstrance and felt strength and well–
being stand up straight inside him, and self-esteem as well; for it began
to occur to him that not many people would even know this for the
terrible sin it was, or would feel a contrition so deep, or would have the
courage truly and fully, in all of its awful shamefulness, to confess it:
and again the strength and the self-esteem fell from him and he was
aghast in the knowledge that still again in this pride and complacency
he had sinned and must still again confess; and again that in recogniz–
ing this newest sin as swiftly as it arose, and in repenting it and
determining to confess it as well, he had in a sense balanced the offense
and restored his well-being and his self-esteem; and again in that there
was evil, and again in the repenting of it there was good and evil as
well, until it began to seem as if he were tempted into eternal wrong
by rightness itself or even the mere desire for rightness and as if he
were trapped between them, good and evil, as if they were mirrors
laid face to face as he had often wished he could see mirrors, truly
reflecting and extending each other forever upon the darkness their
meeting, their facing, created, and he in the dark middle between
them, and there was no true good and no true safety in any effort he
might ever make to realize or repent a wrong but only a new tempta–
tion which his very soul itself seemed powerless to resist; for was not
this sense of peace, of strength, of well-being, itself a sin? yet how else
could a forgiven or forgivable soul possibly feel, or a soul in true con–
trition or self-punishment? I'm a fool to even try, he groaned to himself,
and he felt contempt for every moment of well-being he could recall,
which had come of the goodness of a thought or word or deed.
Every–
thing
goes wrong, he realized. Everything anyone can ever do for him–
self goes wrong. Only His Mercy. That's what He died for. That's what
He's dying for today. Only His Mercy can be any help. Nothing anyone
