“Look here,” said the clergyman gently. “I’m not going to interfere with your going up for Confirmation to-morrow. If you were in earnest, Aviolet, about meaning it to be a new beginning—and I can’t, even now, believe that you weren’t—you’ve got your chance, and you can take it. I’m not going to say anything more to you. Good-night.”
He opened the door quietly and glanced outside.
“All clear—you can cut along.”
Cecil looked up at him as he went out, and the misery in his eyes sent a pang through the master’s heart.
He turned back into the empty room again and sat for a long while with his hands over his face.
“O God, I make Thee a solemn vow, on this day of my Confirmation, that I will never again tell a single wilful lie, so long as I live. And this I sacredly vow and promise, so help me God, for Christ’s sake, Amen.”
Cecil Aviolet, trembling in deadly earnestness, was on his knees in the school chapel. His whole being was strung up momentarily to the pitch of intensity necessary to his belief in his own vow.
When he had repeated this formula, he involuntarily relaxed the tension of mind and body in the exhalation of a long, quivering breath.
Now he knew that if he could break that oath made to God, he was damned indeed. He could never break it. He must be safe, now.