And now Monty set the vision in front of me.  I was to see three ideals, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, and merge them all in one vision—­Beauty.  For Goodness was only beauty in morals, and Truth was only beauty in knowledge.  And I was to overcome my sins, not by negatively fighting against them when they were hard upon me, but by positively pursuing in the long days free from temptation my goal of Beauty.  Then the things which I had confessed would gradually drop out of my life, as things which did not fit in with my ideal.  For they were not good, nor true, nor beautiful.

“Pursue Beauty,” he said, “like the Holy Grail.”

With my head still bowed in my hands, I felt that happiness which comes upon men when they grasp a great idea.  I felt lofty resolution and serene confidence flowing into me like wine.

“And, finally,” said this masterly priest, “know how certain you can be that the absolution which I am going to pronounce is full and final.  God only asks a true penitence, and you can offer Him no fairer fruits of penitence than those you have brought this morning.  Know, then, that there will be no whiter soul in all God’s church than yours, when you leave this room.  For you will be as white as when you left the baptismal font.  Now listen.  You shall hear what was worked for you on Calvary.”

I listened, and heard him speak with studied solemnity the words of absolution.  And if a feeling can be said to grow up and get older, then there came upon me at that moment the feeling of a child released to play in the sunlight; only it was that feeling grown to a man’s estate.

I rose from my knees to find that I was standing again in the world.  I saw a ship’s cabin, and a man removing a violet stole from a white surplice.  It didn’t seem a time in which to talk, so I turned the handle of the cabin door, and went out quietly.

I went straight to my Submarine Watch on the deck.  There was a glow pervading me, as of something pleasant which had just occurred.  Forgive me if it be weak to have these fleeting moments of exaltation, but I was seeing goodness, truth, and beauty in everything.  The bright sunlight was beauty; of course it was; the blue sea was beauty.  And it all had something to do with beauty of character and beauty of life.

Imagine me this rare day, lost in my thoughts, as I watched the sea running by, or the new world coming to meet the bows.  Sometimes I watched it with my naked eyes.  Sometimes I hastened the approach of the new things by bringing my field glasses to bear upon them.  And, all the time, I had a sense of satisfaction, as of something pleasant which had just occurred.

At first the broad blue floor of the sea stretched right away on every side without a sail anywhere to suggest that it was a medium of traffic.  The sky, a far paler blue, met the horizon all round.  It was only a slight restlessness over the surface that made the Mediterranean distinguishable from a vast and still inland lake.  The ship plied steadily onward in the opposite direction to the sun, which looked down upon the scene with its hot glance unmodified by cloud or haze.