The --no-commit blues

["Brian L. Troutwine" <goofyheadedpunk@gmail.com>]

I've got two branches, one which I commit to quite frequently and another only 
periodically, call them inward and outward. Inward is where I do my work, 
outward tracks an SVN repository. I'd like to merge inward to outward without 
committing the merge so that I may provide a commit message appropriate for 
checking in to the SVN repo. 

`git merge --no-commit inward' from branch outward, I thought, should do it. 
Performing a `git status' and a `git log' directly afterward seem to indicate 
that the merge was committed. `git commit' insists the branch is now up to 
date.

Am I going about this the wrong way? What does --no-commit mean, if I am?

(Also, I asked this on #git earlier. If anyone happens to idle there, pardon 
me for re-posting this so quickly. I've got terrible lag this morning, enough 
to time out frequently.)