not to look at this or that in the room. If he had, even if the cabinet
had not been mentioned, I do not think I should have offended; but that
does not make the fault less. For which is the more guilty--the man who
knows there is a law against doing a certain thing and does it, or the
man who feels an authority in the depth of his nature forbidding the
thing, and yet does it? Surely the latter is greatly the more guilty.

I rose, and went to the cabinet. But when the contents of the drawer
began to show themselves as I drew near, "I closed my lids, and kept them
close," until I had seated myself on the floor, with my back to the
cabinet, and the drawer projecting over my head like the shelf of a
bracket over its supporting figure. I could touch it with the top of my
head by straightening my back. How long I sat there motionless, I cannot
say, but it seems in retrospect at least a week, such a multitude of
thinkings went through my mind. The logical discussion of a thing that
has to be done, a thing awaiting action and not decision--the experiment,
that is, whether the duty or the temptation has the more to say for
itself, is one of the straight roads to the pit. Similarly, there are
multitudes who lose their lives pondering what they ought to believe,
while something lies at their door waiting to be done, and rendering it
impossible for him who makes it wait, ever to know what to believe. Only
a pure heart can understand, and a pure heart is one that sends out ready
hands. I knew perfectly well what I ought to do--namely, to shut that
drawer with the back of my head, then get up and do something, and forget
the shining stone I had seen betwixt my uncle's finger and thumb; yet
there I sat debating whether I was not at liberty to do in my uncle's
room what he had not told me not to do.

I will not weary my reader with any further description of the evil path
by which I arrived at the evil act. To myself it is pain even now to tell