And the worst of all, naturally, was the theft from his aunt.  Theft?  Was it a theft?  He had never before consented to define the affair as a theft; it had been a misfortune, an indiscretion.  But now he was ready to call it a theft, in order to be on the safe side.  For the sake of placating Omnipotence let it be deemed a theft, and even a mean theft, entailing dire consequences on a weak old woman!  Let it be as bad as the severest judge chose to make it!  He would not complain.  He would accept the arraignment (though really he had not been so blameworthy, etc....).  He knew that with all his sins he, possessed the virtues of good nature, kindness, and politeness.  He was not wholly vile.  In some ways he honestly considered himself a model to mankind.

And then he had recalled certain information received in childhood from authoritative persons about the merciful goodness of God.  His childhood had been rather ceremoniously religious, for his step-uncle, the Lieutenant-General, was a great defender of Christianity as well as of the British Empire.  The Lieutenant-General had even written a pamphlet against a ribald iconoclastic book published by the Rationalist Press Association, in which pamphlet he had made a sorry mess of Herbert Spencer.  All the Lieutenant-General’s relatives and near admirers went to church, and they all went to precisely the same kind of church, for no other kind would have served.  Louis, however, had really liked going to church.  There had once even been a mad suggestion that he should become a choir-boy, but the Lieutenant-General had naturally decided that it was not meet for a child of breeding to associate with plebeians in order to chant the praises of the Almighty.

Louis at his worst had never quite ceased to attend church, though he was under the impression that his religious views had broadened, if not entirely changed.  Beneath the sudden heavy menace of death he discovered that his original views were, after all, the most authentic and the strongest.  And he had much longed for converse with a clergyman, who would repeat to him the beautiful reassurances of his infancy.  Even late in the afternoon, hours before the supreme crisis, he would have welcomed a clergyman, for he was already beginning to be afraid.  He would have liked a clergyman to drop in by accident; he would have liked the first advances to come from the clergyman.

But he could not bring himself to suggest that the rector of St. Luke’s, of whose flock he now formed part, should be sent for.  He had demanded a lawyer, and that was as near to a clergyman as he could get.  He had been balked of the lawyer.  Further on in the evening, when his need was more acute and his mind full of frightful secret apprehensions, he was as far as ever from obtaining a clergyman.  And he knew that, though his eternal welfare might somehow depend on the priest, he could never articulate to Rachel the words, “I should like to see a clergyman.”  It would seem too absurd to ask for a clergyman....  Strangeness of the human heart!