"You lost your temper, too!" said Rudolph quickly.
Carl Miller took a step toward his son, who moved cautiously backward.
"All right, I'll go."
"Are you going to do what I say?" cried his father in a hoarse whisper.
"All right."
Rudolph walked into the church, and for the second time in two days entered the confessional and knelt down. The slat went up almost at once.
"I accuse myself of missing my morning prayers."
"Is that all?"
"That's all."
A maudlin exultation filled him. Not easily ever again would he be able to put an abstraction before the necessities of his ease and pride. An invisible line had been crossed, and he had become aware of his isolation—aware that it applied not only to those moments when he was Blatchford Sarnemington but that it applied to all his inner life. Hitherto such phenomena as "crazy" ambitions and petty shames and fears had been but private reservations, unacknowledged before the throne of his official soul. Now he realized unconsciously that his private reservations were himself—and all the rest a garnished front and a conventional flag. The pressure of his environment had driven him into the lonely secret road of adolescence.