But it was so easy to do wrong. There were so many wrong things to
do, and the doing of them was so natural.

"Then repent," said the voices, always ready.

But how did one repent? What was repentance? Did I "hate my sin," as
I was instructed I must, or merely hate the idea of going to hell for
it? Because the latter, even my child's sense told me, was no true
repentance. Yet how could one know the difference?

Above all else there haunted me the fear of the "Unforgivable Sin."
What this was I was never able to discover. I dreaded to enquire too
closely, lest I should find I had committed it. Day and night the
terror of it clung to me.

"Believe," said the voices; "so only shall you be saved." How
believe? How know you did believe? Hours would I kneel in the dark,
repeating in a whispered scream:

"I believe, I believe. Oh, I do believe!" and then rise with white
knuckles, wondering if I really did believe.

Another question rose to trouble me. In the course of my meanderings
I had made the acquaintance of an old sailor, one of the most
disreputable specimens possible to find; and had learned to love him.
Our first meeting had been outside a confectioner's window, in the
Commercial Road, where he had discovered me standing, my nose against
the glass, a mere palpitating Appetite on legs. He had seized me by
the collar, and hauled me into the shop. There, dropping me upon a
stool, he bade me eat. Pride of race prompted me politely to decline,