An evil odour and a sickening pain combined, might be a symbol
of the torture. As is in the nature of dreams, possibly I lay but a
little second on the rack, yet an age seemed shot through and
through with the burning meshes of that crime, while, cowering and
terror-stricken, I tossed about the loathsome fact in my mind. I had
DONE it, and from the done there was no escape: it was for evermore
a thing done.--Came a sudden change: I awoke. The sun stained with
glory the curtains of my room, and the light of light darted keen as
an arrow into my very soul. Glory to God! I was innocent! The stone
was rolled from my sepulchre. With the darkness whence it had
sprung, the cloud of my crime went heaving lurid away. I was a
creature of the light and not of the dark. For me the sun shone and
the wind blew; for me the sea roared and the flowers sent up their
odours. For me the earth had nothing to hide. My guilt was wiped
away; there was no red worm gnawing at my heart; I could look my
neighbour in the face, and the child of my friend might lay his hand
in mine and not be defiled! All day long the joy of that deliverance
kept surging on in my soul.
"But something yet more precious, more lovely than such an awaking,
will repentance be to the sinner; for after all it was but a dream
of the night from which that set me free, and the spectre-deed that
vanished had never had a place in the world of fact; while the
horror from which repentance delivers, is no dream, but a stubborn
abiding reality.
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