It seemed to me at last that I was actually throwing away my eternal happiness for Susanna's sake.

At night I started up from terrifying dreams, in which I saw myself kneeling at the altar with Susanna beside me--she looking so unsuspecting, so supernaturally beautiful, while the minister stood with a face of thunder, as if he knew that a soul would now be destroyed, and that, in the Communion, he was carrying out God's vengeance.

Another night I awoke with a fancy that a scornful laugh came from under the bed, and with a conviction that the Evil One lurked there, curled up like a great snake.

I hid myself with a beating heart under the down quilt, until I heard people moving in the yard below in the morning, and then I ventured to fly from the room.
It was Confirmation Day.
I stood at the glass that morning, before church-time, dressing myself in my new clothes, in the "blue room," the room in which my mother had been confined during the many years she was ill.

I could see, through the small-paned windows, boat after boat full of nicely-dressed confirmation candidates, with their parents in holiday costume, rowing, in the bright autumn day, across the bay, and landing, some at our pier, others at the parsonage landing-place.
An impression of solemnity suddenly filled me with despair; I thought of how all these people would come into God's kingdom as easily as they were now rowing into the sunny bay this quiet Sunday morning, while I alone stood without hope of salvation.