Latest / Classic Mystery & Suspense Library / The Turn of the Screw - Henry James

Transcript

The Turn of the Screw - Henry James · Classic Mystery & Suspense Library

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Preface. The story had held us round the fire sufficiently breathless,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: should essentially be. I remember no comment uttered till somebody
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: happened to say that it was the only case he
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: had met in which such a visitation had fallen on
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: a child. The case, I may mention, was that of
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: an apparition in just such an old house as had
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: gathered us for the occasion, an appearance of a dreadful kind,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: till a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and waking her up in the terror of it, waking
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: sleep again, but to encounter also herself before she had
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: It was this observation that drew from Douglas, not immediately,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: but later in the evening, a reply that had the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: interesting consequence to which I call attention. Some one else
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: told a story not particularly effective, which I saw he
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: was not following this I took for a sign that
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: he had himself something to produce, and that we should
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: only have to wait. We waited, in fact, till two
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: nights later. But that same evening, before we scattered, he
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: brought out what was in his mind. I quite agree
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: in regard to Griffin's ghost or whatever it was, that
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: it's appearing first to the little boy. That's so tender.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: An age adds a particular touch, but it's not the
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: first occurrence of its charming kind that I know to
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: have involved a child. If the child gives the effect
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: another turn of the screw. What do you say to
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: two children? We say, of course, somebody exclaimed that they
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: give two turns, also that we want to hear about them.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: he had got up to present his back, looking down
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: at his interlock with his hands in his pockets. Nobody
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: but me till now has ever heard it's quite too horrible. This, naturally,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: was declared by several voices to give the thing the
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: utmost price, and our friend with quiet art, prepared his
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: and going on, it's beyond everything. Nothing at all that
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I know touches it for sheer terror. I remember asking
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: he seemed to say. It was not so simple as that,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: to be really at a loss how to qualify it.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: wincing grimace. For dreadful, dreadfulness, Oh how delicious, cried one
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: of the women. He took no notice of her. He
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: looked at me, but as if instead of me he
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: saw what he spoke of, for general uncanny, ugliness and
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: horror and pain. Well, then I said, just sit right
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: down and begin. He turned round to the fire, gave
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: a kick to a log, muched it an instant. Then
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: as he faced us again, I can't begin. I shall
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: have to send to town. There was a unanimous groan
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: at this, and much reproach, after which, in his preoccupied way,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: he explained the stories written. It's in a locked drawer,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: but has not been out for years. I could write
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: to my man and enclose the key. He could send
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: down the packet as he finds it. It was to me,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: in particular that he appeared to propound. This appeared almost
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: to appeal for aid, not to hesitate. He had broken
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: a thickness of ice, the formation of many a winter,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: had had his reasons for a long silence. The others
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: resented postponement, but it was just a scruples that charmed me.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I adjured him to write by the first post and
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: to agree with us for an early hearing. Then I
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: asked him if the experience in question had been his own.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: To this his answer was prompt, Oh, thank god now,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: and is the record yours? You took the thing down,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: nothing but the impression I took that here, he tapped
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: his heart. I've never lost it. Then your manuscript is
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: he hung fire again. A woman's She has been dead
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: these twenty years. She sent me the pages in question
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: before she died. They were all listening now, And of
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: course there was somebody to be arch or at any
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: rate to draw the inference. But if he put the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: inference by without a smile, it was also without irritation.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: She was a most charming person. But she was ten
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: years older than I. She was my sister's governess. He
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: quietly said. She was the most agreeable woman I've ever known.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: In her position, she would have been worthy of any whatever.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: It was long ago, and this episode was long before
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: it was a trinity. And I found her at home
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: on my coming down the second summer. I was much
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: there that year. It was a beautiful one, and we
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: had in her off hours, some strolls and talks in
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the garden, talks in which she struck me as awfully
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: clever and nice. Oh, yes, don't grin. I liked her extremely,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: and am glad to this day to think she liked
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: me too. If she hadn't, she wouldn't have told me.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: She had never told anyone. Twasn't simply that she said so,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: but that I knew she hadn't. I was sure. I
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: could see. You'll easily judge why when you hear? Because
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: the thing had been such a scare. He continued to
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: fix me. You'll easily judge, he repeated, you will. I
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: fixed him too. I see she was in love, he laughed,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: for the first time. You are acute. Yes, she was
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: in love. That is she had been. That came out.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: She couldn't tell a story without its coming out. I
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: saw it, and she saw I saw it, but neither
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: of us spoke of it. I remember the time and
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: the place, the corner of the lawn, the shade of
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the great beeches in the long hot summer afternoon. It
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: wasn't a scene for a shudder. But oh, he quitted
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: the fire and dropped back into his chair. You'll receive
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: the packet Thursday morning, I inquired, Probably not till the
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: second post. Well, then after dinner, you'll all meet me here.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: He looked at us round again. Isn't anybody going? It
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: was almost the tone of hope, everybody will stay. I will,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: and I will, cried the ladies whose departure had been fixed.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Missus Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more light.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Who was it she was in love with? The story
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: will tell? I took upon myself to reply, Oh, I
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: can't wait for the story. The story won't tell, said Douglas,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: not in any literal, vulgar way. More's the pity. Then
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: that's the only way I ever understand. Won't you tell, Douglas?
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Somebody else? Inquired? He sprang to his feet again. Yes, tomorrow.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Now I must go to bed. Good night, and quickly
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: catching up a candlestick, he left us slightly bewildered. From
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: our end of the Great Brown Hall, we heard his
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: step on the stair, whereupon Missus Griffin spoke, well, if
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know who she was in love with I
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: know who he was. She was ten years older, said
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: her husband Raison du pleu at that age. But it's
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: rather nice his long reticence forty years Griffin put in
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: with this outbreak at last, the outbreak I have returned
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: will make a tremendous occasion of Thursday night, And every
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: one so agreed with me that in the light of
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: it we lost all attention for everything else. The last story, however,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: incomplete and like the mere opening of a serial, had
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: been told. We hand shook and candle stuck, as somebody said,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: and went to bed. I knew the next day that
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: a letter containing the key had by the first post
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: gone off to his London apartments. But in spite of,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: or perhaps just on account of the eventual diffusion of
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: this knowledge, we quite left him alone till after dinner,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: till such an hour of the evening, in fact, as
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: might best accord with the kind of emotion on which
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: our hopes were fixed. Then he became as communicative as
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: we could desire, and indeed gave us his best reason
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: for being so we had it from him again before
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: the fire in the hall, as we had had our
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: mild wonders of the previous night, it appeared that the
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: narrative he had promised to read us really required for
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: a proper intelligence a few words of prolog. Let me
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: say here distinctly to have done with it, that this narrative,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: from an exact transcript of my own, made much later,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: is what I shall presently give poor Douglas before his death,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: when it was in sight, committed to me the manuscript
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: that reached him on the third of these days, and
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: that on the same spot, with immense effect, he began
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: to read to our hushed little circle on the night
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: of the fourth. The departing ladies who had said they
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: would stay, didn't, of course, thank Heaven, stay. They departed
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: in consequence of arrangements made in a rage of curiosity,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: as they professed, produced by the touches with which he
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: had already worked us up. But that only made his
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: little final auditory more compact and select kept it round
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: the hearth subject to a common thrill. The first of
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: these touches conveyed that the written statement took up the
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: tale at a point after it had in a manner begun.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: The fact to be in possession of was therefore that
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: his old friend, the youngest of several daughters of a
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: poor country parson had, at the age of twenty, on
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: taking service for the first time in the school room,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: come up to London in trepidation to answer in person
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: an advertisement that had already placed her brief correspondence with
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the advertiser. This person proved on her presenting herself for
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: judgment at a house in Harley Street, that impressed her
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: as vast and imposing. This prospective patron proved a gentleman,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: a bachelor in the prime of life, such a figure
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: as had never risen save in a dream or an
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: old novel before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Hampshire vicarage. One could easily fix his type. It never
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: happily dies out. He was handsome and bold, and pleasant,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: off hand and gay and kind. He struck her inevitably
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: as gallant and splendid. But what took her most of all,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: and gave her the courage she afterwards showed, was that
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: he put the whole thing to her as a kind
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: of favor, an obligation he should gratefully incur. She conceived
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant, saw him all
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: in a glow of high fashion, of good looks, of
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: expensive habits, of charming ways with women. He had for
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: his own town residence, a big house filled with the
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase. But
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: it was to his country home, an old family place
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: in Essex, that he wished her immediately to proceed. He
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: had been left, by the death of their parents in India,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Guardian to a small nephew and a small niece, children
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: of a younger a military brother, whom he had lost
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: two years before. These children were by the strangest of
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: chances for a man in his position, a lone man
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: without the right sort of experience or a grain of patience.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Very heavily on his hands. It had all been a
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: great worry, and on his own part, doubtless a series
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: of blunders. But he immensely pitied the poor chicks and
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: had done all he could. Had, in particular sent them
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: down to his other house, the proper place for them being,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: of course, the country, and kept them there from the first,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: with the best people he could find to look after them,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: parting even with his own servants to wait on them,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: and going down himself whenever he might to see how
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: they were doing. The awkward thing was that they had
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: practically no other relations, and that his own affairs took
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: up all his time. He had put them in possession
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: of Bligh, which was healthy and secure, and had placed
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: at the head of their little establishment, but below stairs
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: only an excellent woman, missus Gross, whom he was sure
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: his visitor would like, and who had formerly been made
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: to his mother. She was now housekeeper and was also
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: acting for the time as superintendent to the little girl,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: of whom, without children of her own, she was, by
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: good luck extremely fond. There were plenty of people to help,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: but of course the young lady, who should go down
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: as governess would be in supreme authority. She would also have,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: in holidays to look after the small boy, who had
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: been for a term at school, young as he was
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: to be sent. But what else could be done, and who,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: as the holidays were about to begin, would be back
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: from one day to the other. There had been for
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: the two children at first a young lady whom they
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: had had the misfortune to lose. She had done for
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: them quite beautifully. She was a most respectable person till
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: her death, the great awkwardness of which had precisely left
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: no alternative, but the school for little miles. Missus gross
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: since then, in the way of manners and things, had
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: done as she could for Flora. And there were further
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a cook, a housemaid, a dairy woman, an old pony,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: an old groom, and an old gardener, all likewise thoroughly respectable.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: So far had Douglas presented his picture. When someone put
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: a question, and what did the former governess die of?
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Of so much respectability? Our friend's answer was prompt, that
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: will come out. I don't anticipate. Excuse me, I thought
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: that was just what you are doing in her successor's place.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I suggested, I should have wished to learn if the
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: office brought with it necessary danger to life. Douglas completed
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: my thought. She did wish to learn, and she did learn.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: You shall hear tomorrow what she learned. Meanwhile, of course,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: the prospect struck her as slightly grim. She was young, untried, nervous.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: It was a vision of serious duties in little company
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: of really great loneliness. She hesitated, took a couple of
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: days to consult and consider, but the salary offered much
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: exceeded her modest measure, and on a second interview she
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: faced the music, she engaged, and Douglas, with this ma
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: a pause that, for the benefit of the company, moved
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: me to throw in the moral of which was of
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: course the seduction exercised by the splendid young man. She
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: succumbed to it. He got up, as he had done
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the night before, went to the fire, gave a stir
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: to a log with his foot, then stood a moment
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: with his back to us. She saw him only twice. Yes,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: but that's just the beauty of her passion. A little
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: to my surprise. On this Douglas turned round to me.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: It was the beauty of it. There were others, he
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: went on, who hadn't succumbed. He told her frankly, all
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: his difficulty that for several applicants the conditions had been prohibitive.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: They were somehow simply afraid. It sounded dull. That sounded strange,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: and all the more so because of his main condition,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: which was that she should never trouble him, but never
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: never neither a pear, yeel, nor complain nor write about anything.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Only meet all questions herself, receive all monies from his solicitor,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: take the whole thing over and let him alone. She
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: when for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: thanking her for the sacrifice, she already felt rewarded. But
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: was that all her reward? One of the ladies asked,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: she never saw him again? Oh, said the lady, which,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: as our friend immediately left us again. Was the only
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: other word of importance contributed to the subject till the
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: best chair, he opened the faded red cover of a thin,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: old fashioned gilt edged album. The whole thing took indeed
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: more nights than one, But on the first occasion the
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: same lady put another question, what is your title? Ay?
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: I haven't one, Oh I have, I said, But Douglas,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: without heeding me, had begun to read with a fine
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: clearness that was like a rendering to the ear of
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: the beauty of his author's hand, and of the preface
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, Chapter one.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: and drops, a little see saw of the right throbs
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: and the wrong. After rising in town to meet his appeal,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: I had at all events, a couple of very bad
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: days found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: made a mistake. In this state of mind, I spent
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: the long hours of bumping swinging coach that carried me
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: to the stopping place at which I was to be
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: met by a vehicle from the house. This convenience, I
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: was told, had been ordered, and I found toward the
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: close of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in waiting
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: for me. Driving at that hour on a lovely day
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: through a country to which the summer sweetness seemed to
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: offer me a friendly welcome, my fortitude mounted afresh, and
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: as we turned into the avenue and counted a reprieve
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: that was probably but a proof of the point to
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: which it had sunk. I suppose I had expected, or
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: had dreaded something so melancholy that what greeted me was
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: a good surprise. I remember as a most pleasant impression
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: the broad, clear front, its open windows and fresh curtains,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: and the pair of maids looking out. I remember the
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: lawn and the bright flowers, and the crunch of my
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: wheels on the gravel, and the clustered tree tops over
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: which the rook circled and cawed in the golden sky.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: The scene had a greatness that made it a different
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: fear from my own scant home. And there immediately appeared
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: at the door with a little girl in her hand,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: a civil person who dropped me as decent a curtsey,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished visitor.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: I had received in Harley Street a narrower notion of
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the place, and that, as I recalled it, made me
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: think the proprietor, still more of a gentleman, suggested that
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: what I was to enjoy might be something beyond his promise.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: I had no drop again till the next day, for
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: I was carried triumphantly through the following hours by my
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: introduction to the younger of my pupils. The little girl
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: who accompanied missus gross appeared to me on the spot,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: a creature so charming as to make it a great
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: fortune to have to do with her. She was the
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I afterward
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: wondered that my employer had not told me more of her.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: I slept little that night, I was too much excited,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: and this astonished me too. I recollect remained with me,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: adding to my sense of the liberality with which I
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: was treated. The large, impressive room, one of the best
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: in the house, the great state bed, as I almost
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: felt it, the full figured draperies, the long glasses in
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: which for the first time I could see myself from
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: head to foot, all struck me like the extraordinary charm
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: of my small charge. As so many things thrown in,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: it was thrown in as well, from the first moment
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: that I should get on with Missus Grosse, in a
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: relation over which, on my way in the coach I
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: fear I had rather brooded. The only thing, indeed, that
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: in this early outlook might have made me shrink again
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: was the clear circumstance of her being so glad to
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: see me. I perceived within half an hour that she
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: was so glad stout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman as
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: to be positively on her guard against showing it too much.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I wondered even then a little why she should wish
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: not to show it, and that, with reflection with suspicion,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: might of course have made me uneasy. But it was
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: connection with anything so beatific as the radiant image of
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: my little girl, the vision of whose angelic beauty had
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: probably more than anything else to do with the restlessness
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: that before morning made me several times rise and wander
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: about my room, to take in the whole picture and prospect,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: to watch from my open window the faint summer dawn,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: to look at such portions of the rest of the
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: house as I could catch, and to listen while in
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: the fading dusk the first birds began to twitter, for
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: and not without but within than I had fancied I heard.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: There had been a moment when I believed I recognized
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: faith and far the cry of a child. There had
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: been another when I found myself just consciously, starting as
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: at the passage before my door, of a light footstep.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: But these fancies were not marked enough to be thrown off.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: And it is only in the light or the gloom
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: I should rather say of other and subsequent matters, that
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: they now come back to me to watch teach form.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Little Flora would too, evidently be the making of a
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: happy and useful life. It had been agreed between us
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: downstairs that after this first occasion I should have her
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: as a matter of course at night, her small white
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: bed being already arranged to that end in my room.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: What I had undertaken was the whole care of her,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: and she had remained just this last time with Missus
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Gross only as an effect of our consideration for my
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: inevitable strangeness and her natural timidity. In spite of this timidity,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: which the child herself, in the oddest way in the world,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: had been perfectly frank and brave about allowing it without
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: a sign of uncomfortable consciousness, with the deep sweet serenity,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: indeed of one of Raphael's holy infants, to be discussed,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: to be imputed to her and to determine us, I
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: feel quite sure she would presently like me. It was
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: part of what I already liked Missus Gross herself for
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: and wonder. As I sat at supper with four tall candles,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and with my pupil in a high chair and a
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: bib brightly facing me between them over bread and milk.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: There were naturally things that, in Flora's presence could pass
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: between us only as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: roundabout illusions and the little boy does he look like her?
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Is he too? So very remarkable? One wouldn't flatter a child, Oh, miss,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: most remarkable if you think well of this one. And
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: she stood there with a plade in her hand, beaming
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: at our companion, who looked from one of us to
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the other with placid, heavenly eyes that contained nothing to
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: check us. Yes, if I do, you will be carried
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: away by the little gentleman. That I think is what
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: I came for, to be carried away. I am afraid, however,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I remember feeling the impulse to add I'm rather easily
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: carried away. I was carried away in London. I can
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: still see Missus Grose's broad face as she took this
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: in in Harley Street. In Harley Street. Well miss, you're
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: not the first, and you won't be the last. Oh
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I've no pretension I could laugh two being the only one.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: My other pupil. At any rate, as I I understand,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: comes back tomorrow, not to morrow Friday. Miss, he arrives
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: as you did by the coach under care of the guard,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: and is to be met by the same carriage. I
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: forthwith expressed that the proper, as well as the pleasant
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: and friendly thing would be therefore, that on the arrival
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: of the public conveyance, I should be in waiting for
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: him with his little sister, an idea in which Missus
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Grosse concurred so heartily that I somehow took her manner
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: as a kind of comforting pledge never falsified, Thank Heaven,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: that we should, on every question be quite at one. Oh,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: she was glad I was there. What I felt the
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: next day was, I suppose nothing that could be fairly
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival. It
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: was probably, at the most only a slight oppression produced
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: by a fallow measure of the scale. As I walked
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: round them, gazed up at them, took them in of
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: my new circumstances. They had, as it were, an extent
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: and mass for which I had not been prepared, and
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: in the presence of which I found myself freshly a
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: little scared as well as a little proud. Lessons in
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: this agitation certainly suffered some delay. I reflected that my
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: first duty was by the gentlest arts I could contrive
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: to win the child into the sense of knowing me.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: I spent the day with her out of doors. I
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: arranged with her, to her great satisfaction that it should
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: be she, she only who might show me the place.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: She showed it, step by step, and room by room,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: and secret by secret, with droll, delightful, childish talk about it,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: and with the result in half an hour of our
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: becoming immense friends. Young as she was, I was struck
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: throughout our little tour with her confidence and courage, with
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: the way in empty chambers and dulk corridors, on crooked
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: staircases that made me pause, and even on the summit
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: of an old machicolated square tower that made me dizzy.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Her morning music, her disposition to tell me so many
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: more things than she asked, rang out and led me on.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I have not seen BLI since the day I left it,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: and I dare say that to my older and more
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: informed eyes it would now appear sufficiently contracted. But as
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: my little conductress, with her hair of gold and her
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: frock of blue, danced before me round corners and pattered
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: down passages, I had the view of a castle of
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as would,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: somehow for diversion of the young idea, take all color
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: out of story books. And fairy tales. Wasn't it just
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: a story book over which I had fallen a doze
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: and dream. No, tit was a big, ugly, antique but
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still older,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: half replaced and half utilized, in which I have the
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: fancy of our being almost is lost, as a handful
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: strangely at the helm end of chapter one chapter two.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: This came home to me when two days later I
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: drove over with floor to meet as missus, grow said
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: the little gentleman, and all the more for an incident
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: that presenting itself the second evening had deeply disconcerted me.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: The first day had been on the whole, as I
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: have expressed, reassuring, but I was to see it wind
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: up in keen apprehension. The post bag that evening, it
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: came late, contained a letter for me, which, however, in
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: the hand of my employer, I found to be composed
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: but of a few words enclosing another addressed to himself
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: with a seal still unbroken. This I recognize is from
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the head Master, and the head Master's an awful bore
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: read him. Please deal with him. But mind you don't
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: report not a word. I'm off I broke the seal
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: with a great effort, so great a one that I
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: was a long time coming to it. Took the unopened
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: missive that last up to my room and only attacked
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: it just before going to bed. I had better have
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: let it wait till morning, for it gave me a
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: second sleepless night with no counsel to take the next day,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: I was full of distress and had finally got so
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: the better of me that I determined to open myself,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: at least to missus gross. What does it mean the
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: child's dismissed his school? She gave me a look that
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: I remarked at the moment, then visibly, with a quick blankness,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: seemed to try to take it back. But aren't they
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: all sent home? Yes, but only for the holidays. Myles
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: may never go back at all. Consciously under my attention,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: she reddened. They won't take him. They absolutely decline. At
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: I saw them fill with good tears. What has he done?
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I hesitated. Then I judged best simply to hand her
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: my letter, which however, had the effect of making her
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: without taking it, simply put her hands behind her. She
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: shook her head, sadly, such things are not for me.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Miss my counselor couldn't read. I winced at my mistake,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: which I attenuated as I could, and opened my letter
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: again to repeat it to her. Then, faltering in the act,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: and folding it up once more, I put it back
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: in my pocket. Is he really bad? The tears were
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: still in her eyes. Do the gentlemen say so? They
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: go into no particulars. They simply expressed their regret that
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: it should be impossible to keep him. That can have
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: only one meaning. Missus gross listened with dumb emotion. She
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: forbore to ask me what this meaning might be, so
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: that presently, to put the thing with some coherence, and
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: I went on that he's an injury to the others.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: she suddenly flamed up. Master miles him an injury. There
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: was such a flood of good faith in it, that,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: though I had not yet seen the child, my very
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: fears made me jump to the absurdity of the idea.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: I found myself to meet my friend, the better, offering
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: it on the spot sarcastically to his poor little innocent mates.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: It's too dreadful, cried missus Grose to say such cruel things.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Why he's scarce ten years old. Yes, yes, it would
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: be incredible. She was evidently grateful for such a profession.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: See him, miss first, then believe it. I felt, forthwith
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: a new impatience to see him. It was the beginning
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: of a curiosity that, for all the next hours was
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: to deepen, almost to pain. Missus Grose was aware I
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: could judge of what she had produced in me, and
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: she followed it up with assurance, you might as well
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: believe it of the little lady bless her, she added.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: The next moment, look at her. I turned and saw
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: that Flora, whom ten minutes before I had established in
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: and a copy of Nice Round OAHs, now presented herself
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: to view with the open door. She expressed in her
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: little way, in extraordinary detachment from disagreeable duties, looking to me, however,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: with a great childish light that seemed to offer it
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: as a mere result of the affection she had conceived
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: for my person, which had rendered necessary that she should
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: follow me. I needed nothing more than this to feel
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: the full force of missus Grose's comparison, and catching my
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: pupil in my arms, covered her with kisses in which
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: there was a sob of atonement. Nonetheless, the rest of
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: the day I watched for further occasion to approach my colleague,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: especially as toward evening I began to fancy she rather
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: sought to avoid me. I overtook her. I remember on
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: the staircase we went down together, and at the bottom
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: I detained her, holding her there with a hand on
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: her arm. I'd take what you said to me at
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: noon as a declaration that you've never known him to
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: be bad. She threw back her head. She had clearly
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: by this time and very honestly adopted an attitude. Oh,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: never known him. I don't pretend that I was upset again,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: then you have known him? Yes, indeed, miss thank God,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: on reflection, I accepted this. You mean that a boy
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: who never is is no boy for me. I held
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: her tighter. You like them with the spirit to be naughty. Then,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: keeping pace with her answer, so do I I eagerly
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: brought out, but not to the degree to contaminate, to
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: contaminate my big word left her at a loss. I
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: explained it too corrupt. She stared, taking my meaning in,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: but it produced in her an odd laugh. Are you
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: afraid he'll corrupt you? She put the question with such
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: a fine, bold humor that with a laugh a little silly,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: doubtless to match her own, I gave way for the
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: time to the apprehension of ridicule. By the next day,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped up
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: in another place. What was the lady who was here
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: before the last governess? She was also young and pretty,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: almost as young and almost as pretty, miss even as you. Ah.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Then I hope her youth and her beauty helped her,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: I recollect, throwing off he seems to like as young
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: and pretty? Oh he did, missus gross assented it was
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: the way he liked everyone. She had no sooner spoken, indeed,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: than she caught herself up. I mean, that's his way,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: the masters. I was struck. But of whom did you speak? First?
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: She looked blank, but she colored why of him? Of
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the master? But who else? There was so obviously no
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: one else that the next moment I had lost my
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: impression of her having accidentally said more than she meant,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: and I merely asked what I wanted to know. Did
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: she see anything in the boy that wasn't right? She
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: never told me I had a scruple, but I overcame
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: it was she careful particular missus Grose appeared to try
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: to be conscientious about some things, yes, but not about all. Again,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: she considered, well, miss she's gone. I won't tell tales.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: I quite understand your feeling. I hastened to reply, but
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: I thought it after an instant not opposed to this
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: concession to pursue. Did she die here? No, she went off.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know what there was in this brevity of
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: missus Grose's that struck me as ambiguous. Went off to die?
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Missus Grosse looked straight out of the window. But I
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: felt that hypothetically I had a right to know what
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: young persons engaged for BLI were expected to do. She
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: was taken ill you mean, and went home. She was
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: not taken ill so far as appeared in this house.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: She left it at the end of the year to
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: go home, as she said, for a short holiday, to
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: which the time she had put in had certainly given
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: her a right. We had then a young woman, a
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: nurse maid, who had stayed on, and who was a
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: good girl and clever, and she took the children altogether
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: for the interval. But our young lady never came back.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: And at the very moment I was expecting her, I
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: heard from the master that she was dead. I turned
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: this over, But of what he never told me. But please,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: miss said Missus Grose, I must get to my work.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: End of chapter two, Chapter three. Her thus turning her
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: back on me, was fortunately not for my just preoccupations,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: a snub that could check the growth of our mutual esteem.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: We met after I had brought home little Miles more
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: intimately than ever on the ground of my stupefication, my
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: general emotion so monstrous was I then ready to pronounce
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: it that such a child as had now been revealed
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: to me should be under an interdict. I was a
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: little late on the scene, and I felt, as he
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: stood wistfully looking out for me before the door of
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: the inn at which the coach had put him down,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: that I had seen him on the instant without and within,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: in the great glow of freshness, the same positive fragrance
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: of purity in which I had from the first moment
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: seen his little sister. He was incredibly beautiful, and Missus
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Grosse had put a finger on it. Everything but a
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: sort of passion of tenderness for him was swept away
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: by his presence. What I then in there took him
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: to my heart for was something divine that I have
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: never found to the same degree in any child. His
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: indescribable little air of knowing nothing in the world but love.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: It would have been impossible to carry a bad name
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: with a greater sweetness of innocence. And by the time
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: I had got back to bly with him, I remained
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: merely bewildered so far, that is, as I was not
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: outraged by the sense of the horrible letter locked up
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: in my room in a drawer. As soon as I
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: could compass a private word with Missus Grose, I declared
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: to her that it was grotesque. She promptly understood me.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: You mean the cruel charge. It doesn't live an instant,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: My dear woman, look at him, she smiled at my
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: pretension to have discovered his charm. I assure you, miss I,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: do nothing else. What will you say? Then, she immediately added,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: in answer to the letter, I had made up my
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: mind nothing, And to his uncle I was incisive nothing,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: And to the boy himself, I was wonderful nothing. She
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Then I'll stand by you. We'll see it out. We'll
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: see it out, I ardently echoed, giving her my hand
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: to make it a vow. She held me there a moment,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: then whisked up her apron again with her detached hand.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Would you mind, miss if I used the freedom to
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: kiss me? No. I took the good creature in my arms,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: and after we had embraced like sisters, felt still more
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: fortified and indignant. This, at all events, was for the
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: time a time so full that, as I recall away
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: it went, it reminds me of all the art I
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: now need to make it a little distinct. What I
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: look back at with amazement is the situation I accepted
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: I had undertaken with my companion to see it out.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: And I was under a charm apparently that could smooth
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: away the extent and the far and difficult connections of
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: such an effort. I was lifted aloft on a great
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: wave of infatuation and pity. I found it simple in
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: my ignorance, my confusion, and perhaps my conceit to assume
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: that I could deal with a boy whose education for
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: the world was all on the point of beginning. I
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: am unable even to remember at this day what proposal
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: I framed for the end of his holidays and the
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: resumption of his studies. Lessons with me, Indeed, that charming summer,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: we all had a theory that he was to have,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: But I now feel that for weeks the lessons must
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: have been rather my own. I learned something at first,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: certainly that had not been one of the teachings of
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: my small, smothered life. Learned to be amused and even amusing,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: and not to think for the morrow. It was the
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: first time in a manner that I had known space
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: and air and freedom, all the music of summer, and
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: all the mystery of nature. And then there was consideration,
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: and consideration was sweet. Oh, it was a trap, not designed,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: but deep to my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: my vanity, to whatever in me was most excitable. The
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: best way to picture it all is to say that
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: I was off my guard. They gave me so little trouble.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: They were of a gentleness, so extraordinary I used to speculate,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: but even this with a dim disconnectedness as to how
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: the rough future, for all futures are rough, would handle
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: them and might bruise them. They had the bloom of
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: health and happiness. And yet as if I had been
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: in charge of a pair of little grandees, of princes
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: of the blood, for whom everything to be right would
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: have to be enclosed and protected. The only form that,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: in my fancy the after years could take for them
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: was that of a romantic, a really royal extension of
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: the garden and the park. It may be, of course,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: above all, that what suddenly broke into this gives the
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: previous time a charm of stillness, that hush in which
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: something gathers or crouches. The change was actually like the
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: spring of a beast. In the first weeks, the days
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: were long. They often, at their finest gave me what
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: I used to call my own hour, the hour when
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: for my pupils, tea time and bedtime having come and gone,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: I had, before my final retirement a small interval alone.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: Much as I liked my companions, this hour was the
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: thing in the day I liked most, and I liked
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: it best of all when as the light faded, or rather,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: I should say, the day lingered, and the last calls
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: of the last bird sounded in a flushed sky. From
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: the old trees, I could take a turn into the
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: grounds and enjoy, almost with a sense of property that
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: amused and flattered me, the beauty and dignity of the place.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: It was a pleasure at these moments to feel myself
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: tranquil and justified, doubtless perhaps also to reflect that, by
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: my discretion, my quiet, good sense, and general high propriety,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: I was giving pleasure if he ever thought of it.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: To the person to whose pressure I had responded, what
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: I was doing was what he had earnestly hoped and
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: directly asked of me, and that I could, after all
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: do it proved even a greater joy than I had expected.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: I dare say I fancied myself, in short, a remarkable
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: young woman, and took comfort in the faith that this
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: would more publicly appear well. I needed to be remarkable,
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: to offer affront to the remarkable things that presently gave
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: their first sign. It was plump one afternoon, in the
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: middle of my very hour, The children were tucked away,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: and I had come out for my stroll. One of
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: the thoughts that, as I don't in the least shrink
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: now from noting, used to be with me in these wanderings,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: was that it would be as charming and as a
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: charming story suddenly to meet some one. Some one would
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: appear there at the turn of a path and would
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: stand before me and smile and approve. I didn't ask
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: more than that. I only asked that he should know,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: and the only way to be sure he knew would
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: be to see it, and the kind light of it
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: in his handsome face that was exactly present to me,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: by which I mean the face was when on the
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: first of these occasions, at the end of a long
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: June day, I stopped short on emerging from one of
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: the plantations and coming into view of the house. What
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: arrested me on the spot, and with a shock much
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: greater than any vision had allowed for, was the sense
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: that my imagination had in a flash turned real. He
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: did stand there, but high up beyond the lawn and
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: at the very top of the tower to which on
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: that first morning Little Flora had conducted me. This tower
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: was one of a peer square, incongruous crenelated structures that
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: were distinguished for some reason, though I could see little
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: difference as the new and the old. They flanked opposite
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: ends of the house, and were probably architectural absurdities. Redeemed
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: in a measure, indeed, by not being wholly disengaged, nor
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: of a height to pretentious dating in their gingerbread antiquity
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: from a Romantic revival that was already a respectable past.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I admired them, had fancies about them, for we could
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: all profit in a degree, especially when they loomed through
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the dusk, by the grandeur of their actual battlements. Yet
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: it was not at such an elevation that the figure
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: I had so often invoked seemed most in place. It
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: produced in me this figure in the clear twilight. I
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: remember two distinct gasps of emotion, which were sharply the
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: shock of my first and that of my second. Surprise.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: My was a violent perception of the mistake of my first.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: The man who met my eyes was not the person
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: I had precipitately supposed. There came to me thus a
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: bewilderment of vision, of which, after these years there is
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: no living view that I can hope to give. An
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: of fear to a young woman privately bred. And the
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: figure that faced me was a few more seconds assured
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: me as little any one else I knew, as it
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: was the image that had been in my mind. I
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: had not seen it in Harley Street. I had not
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: seen it anywhere the place, moreover, in the strangest way
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: in the world, had on the instant, and by the
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: very fact of its appearance, become a solitude to me,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: at least making my statement here with the deliberation with
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: which I have never made it, the whole feeling of
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: the moment returns. It was as if while I took
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: in what I did take in, all the rest of
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: the scene had been stricken with death. I can hear
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: again as I write, the intense hush in which the
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: sounds of evening dropped, the rook stopped cawing in the
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: golden sky, and the friendly hour lost for the minute
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: all its voice. But there was no other change in nature,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: unless indeed it were a change that I saw with
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: a stranger sharpness. The gold was still in the sky,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: the clearness in the air, and the man who looked
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: at me over the battlements was as definite as a
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: picture in a frame. That's how I thought, with extraordinary
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: quickness of each person that he might have been, and
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: that he was not. We were confronted across our distance
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: quite long enough for me to ask myself with intensity,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: who then he was, and to feel, as an effect
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: of my inability to say, I wonder that in a
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: few instants more became intense. The great question, or one
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: of these, is afterward, I know, with regard to certain matters,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: the question of how long they have lasted? Well, this
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: matter of mine, think what you will of it lasted
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: while I caught at a dozen possibilities, none of which
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: made a difference for the better, that I could see
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: in there having been in the house, and for how
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: long above all a person of whom I was in ignorance.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: It lasted while I just bridled a little with the
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: sense that my office demanded that there should be no
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: such ignorance and no such person. It lasted while this
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: visitant at all events, and there was a touch of
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: the strange freedom, as I remember, in the sign of
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: familiarity of his wearing no hat, seemed to fix me
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: from his position with just the question, just the scrutiny
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: through the fading light that his own presence provoked. We
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: were too far apart to call to each other, but
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: there was a moment at which, at shorter range, some
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: challenge between us, breaking the hush would have been the
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: right result of our straight mutual stare. He was in
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: one of the angles, the one away from the house,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: very erect as it struck me, and with both hands
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: on the ledge. So I saw him as I see
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: the letters I form on this page. Then, exactly after
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: a minute, as if to add to the spectacle, he
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: slowly changed his place, past, looking at me hard all
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: the while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: I had the sharpest sense that during this transit he
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: never took his eyes from me. And I can see
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: at this moment the way his hand as he went
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: passed from one of the crenelations to the next. He
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: stopped the other corner, but less long, and even as
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: he turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned away.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: That was all I knew, And of chapter three, Chapter four,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: it was not that I didn't wait on this occasion
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: for more, for I was rooted as deeply as I was shaken.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: Was there a secret at lie a mystery of Udolpho
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: I can't say how long I turned it over, or
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: how long in a confusion of curiosity and dread, I
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: remained where I had had my collision. I only recalled
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: that when I re entered the house, darkness had quite closed.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: In agitation in the interval certainly had held me and
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: driven me, for I must, encircling about the place, have
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: walked three miles. But I was to be later on
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: so much more overwhelmed that this mere dawn of alarm
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: was a comparatively human chill. The most singular part of it,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: in fact, singular as the rest had been, was the
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: part I became in the hall aware of in meeting
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: Missus Grosse. This picture comes back to me in the
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: general train the impression as I received it on my return,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: of the wide white paneled space, bright in the lamp light,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: and with its portraits and red carpet, And of the
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: good surprised look of my friend, which immediately told me
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: she had missed me. It came to me straightway under
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: her contact that with plain heartiness, mere relieved anxiety at
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: my appearance. She knew nothing whatever that could bear upon
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: the incident I had there ready for her. I had
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: not suspected in advance that her comfortable face would pull
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: me up, and I somehow measured the importance of what
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: I had seen by my thus finding myself hesitant to
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: mention it. Scarce Anything in the whole history seems to
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: me so odd as this fact that my real beginning
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: of fear was one, as I may say, with the
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: instinct of sparing my companion on the spot accordingly in
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: the pleasant hall, and with her eyes on me, I,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: for a reason that I couldn't then have phrased, achieved
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: an inward resolution, offered a vague pretext for my lateness,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: And with the plea of the beauty of the night
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: soon as possible to my room. Here It was another
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: affair here for many days after it was a queer
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: affair enough. There were hours from day to day, or
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: at least there were moments snatched even from my clear duties,
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: when I had to shut myself up to think. It
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: was not so much yet that I was more nervous
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: than I could bear to be, as that I was
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: remarkably afraid of becoming, so that the truth I had
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: now to turn over was simply and clearly the truth
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: that I could arrive at no account whatever of the
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: visitor with whom I had been so inexplicably, and yet
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: has it seemed to me so intimately concerned. It took
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: little time to see that I could sound without forms
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: of inquiry and without exciting remark any domestic complications. The
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: shock I had suffered must have sharpened all my senses.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: I felt sure, at the end of three days, and
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: as the result of mere closer attention, that I had
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: not been practiced upon by the servants, nor made the
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: object of any game of whatever it was that I knew.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: Nothing was known around me. There was but one sane inference.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: Some one had taken a liberty rather gross. That was
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: what repeatedly I dipped into my room and locked the door,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: to say to myself we had been collectively subject to
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: an intrusion. Some unscrupulous traveler, curious in old houses, had
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: made his way in unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from the
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: best point of view, and then stolen out as he came.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: If he had given me such a bold hard stare
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: that was but a part of his indiscretion. The good thing,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: after all, was that we should surely see no more
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: of him. This was not so good a thing, I admit,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: as not to leave me to judge that what essentially
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: made nothing else much signify was simply my charming work.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: My charming work was just my life with Myles and Flora.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: And through nothing could I so like it as through
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: feeling that I could throw myself into it in trouble.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: The attraction of my small charges was a constant joy,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: original fears, the distaste I had begun by entertaining for
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: the probable gray prose of my office. There was to
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: be no gray prose, it appeared, and no long grind.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: So how could work not be charming that presented itself
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: as daily beauty? It was all the romance of the
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: nursery and the poetry of the school room. I don't
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: mean by this, of course, that we studied only fiction
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: and verse. I mean I can express no otherwise the
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: sort of interest my companions inspired. How can I describe
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: that except by saying that, instead of growing use to
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: them and it's a marvel for a governess. I call
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: the Sisterhood to witness. I made constant fresh discoveries. There
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: was one direction, assuredly, in which these discoveries stopped. Deep
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: obscurity continued to cover the region of the boy's conduct school.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: It had been promptly given me. I have noted to
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: face that mystery without a pang. Perhaps even it would
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: be nearer the truth to say that without a word,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: he himself had cleared it up. He had made the
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: whole charge absurd. My conclusion bloomed there with the real
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: rose flush of his innocence. He was only too fine
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: and fair for the little, horrid, unclean school world, and
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: he had paid a price for it. I reflected acutely
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: that the sense of such differences, such superiorities of quality,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: always on the part of the majority, which could include
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: even stupid, sordid head masters, turn infallibly to the vindictive.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: Both the children had a gentleness. It was their only fault,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: and it never made miles a muff that kept them,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: how shall I express it, almost impersonal and certainly quite unpunishable.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: They were like the cherubs of the anecdote, who had morally,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: at any rate nothing to whack. I remember feeling with
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: Miles in especial as if he had had. As it were,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: no history we expect of a small child, a scant one.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: But there was in this beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: yet extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: his age I have seen, struck me as beginning anew
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: each day, he had never for a second suffered. I
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: took this as a direct disproof of his having really
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: been chastised. If he had been wicked, he would have
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: caught it, and I should have caught it. By the rebound,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: I should have found the trace. I found nothing at all,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: and he was therefore an angel. He never spoke of
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: his school, never mentioned a comrade or a master, and I,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: for my part, was quite too much disgusted to allude
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: to them. Of course, I was under the spell. And
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: the wonderful part is that even at that time I
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: perfectly knew I was, but I gave myself up to it.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: It was an antidote to any pain, and I had
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: more pains than one. I was in receipt in these
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: days of disturbing letters from home, where things were not
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: going well, But with my children what things in the
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: world mattered? That was the question I used to put
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: to my scrappy retirements. I was dazzled by their loveliness.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: There was a Sunday to get on when it rained
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: with such force and for so many hours, that there
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: could be no procession to church, and consequence of which,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: as the day declined, I had arranged with Missus Gross
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: that should the evening show improvement, we would attend together
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: the late service. The rain happily stopped, and I prepared
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: for our walk, which through the park and by the
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: good road to the village would be a matter of
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes. Coming downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: I remembered a pair of gloves that had required three stitches,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: and that had received them with a publicity, perhaps not edifying.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: While I sat with the children at their tea served
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: on Sundays by exception, in that cold, clean temple of
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: mahogany in Brass the grown up dining room, the gloves
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: had been dropped there, and I turned in to recover them.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: The day was gray enough, but the afternoon light still lingered,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: and it enabled me on crossing the threshold, not only
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: to recognize on a chair near the wide window, then
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: closed the articles I wanted, but to become aware of
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: a person on the other side of the window and
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: looking straight in one step into the room had sufficed.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: My vision was instantaneous. It was all there. The person
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: looking straight in was the person who had already appeared
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: to me. He appeared thus again, with I won't say
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: greater distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a nearness
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: that represented a forward stride in our intercourse, and made me,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: as I met him, catch my breath and turn cold.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: He was the same. He was the same, and seen
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: this time as he had been seen before from the
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: waist up the window, though the dining room was on
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: the ground floor, not going down to the terrace on
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: which he stood his face who was close to the glass.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Yet the effect of this better view was strangely, only
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: to show me how intense the former had been. He
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: remained but a few seconds long enough to convince me
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: he also saw and recognized. But it was as if
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: I had been looking at him for years and had
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: known him always. Something, however, happened this time that had
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: not happened before. His stare into my face through the
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: glass and across the room was as deep and hard
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: as then, But it quitted me for a moment, during
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: which I could still watch it, see it fixed successively
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: several other things. On the spot. There came to me
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: the added shock of a certitude that it was not
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: for me he had come there, He had come for
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: some one else. The flash of this knowledge, for it
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: was knowledge in the midst of dread, produced in me
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: the most extraordinary effect started as I stood there, a
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: sudden vibration of duty and courage. I say courage, because
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: I was beyond all doubt, already far gone. I bounded
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: straight out of the door again, reached that of the house,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: got in an instant upon the drive, and, passing along
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: the terrace as fast as I could rush, turned a
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: corner and came full in sight. But it was in
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: sight of nothing. Now my visitor had vanished. I stopped.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: I almost dropped with the real relief of this, But
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: I took in the whole scene. I gave him time
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: to reappear. I call it time. But how long was it?
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: I can't speak to the purpose to day of the
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: duration of these things. That kind of measure must have
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: left me. They couldn't have lasted as they actually appeared
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: to me. To last, the terrace and the whole place,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: the lawn and the garden beyond it. All I could
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: see of the park were empty with a great emptiness.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: There were shrubberies and big trees, but I remember the
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: clear assurance I felt that none of them concealed him.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: He was there, or was not there, not there if
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: I didn't see him. I got hold of this. Then, instinctively,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: instead of returning as I had come, went to the window.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: It was confusedly present to me that I ought to
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: place myself where he had stood. I did so. I
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: applied my face to the pane and looked as he
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: had looked into the room, as if at this moment
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: to show me exactly what his range had been missus gross,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: as I had done for himself just before came in
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: from the hall. With this, I had the full image
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: of a repetition of what had already occurred. She saw
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: me as I had seen my own visitant. She pulled
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: up short as I had done. I gave her something
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: of the shock that I had received. She turned white,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: and this made me ask myself if I had blanched
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: as much. She stared in short and retreated on just
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: my lines. And I knew she had then passed out
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: and come round to me, and that I should presently
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: meet her. I remained where I was, and while I waited,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: I thought of more things than one, but there's only one.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: I take space to mention. I wondered why she should
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: be scared, and of chapter four, Chapter five. Oh, she
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: let me know as soon as soon round the corner
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: of the house she loomed again into view. What in
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: the name of goodness is the matter? She was now
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: flushed and out of breath. I said nothing till she
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: came quite near with me. I must have made a
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: wonderful face. Do I show it? You're as white as
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: a sheet. You look awful. I considered, I could meet
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: on this without scruple, any innocence, my need to respect
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: the bloom of missus Grose's had dropped without a rustle
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: from my shoulders. And if I waved for the instant,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: it was not with what I kept back. I put
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: out my hand to her, and she took it. I
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: held her hard a little, liking to feel her close
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: to me. There was a kind of support in the
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: shy heave of her surprise. You came for me for church,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: of course, but I can't go. Has anything happened? Yes,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: you must know?
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: Now?
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: Did I look very queer through this window? Dreadful? Well,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: I said, I've been frightened. Missus Grocer's eyes expressed plainly
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: that she had no wish to be yet, also that
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: she knew too well her place not to be ready
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: to share with me any market inconvenience. Oh, it was
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: quite settled that she must share. Just what you saw
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: from the dining room a minute ago was the effect
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: of that? What I saw just before was much worse?
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: Her hand tightened. What was it an extraordinary man looking in?
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: What did extraordinary man? I haven't the least idea Missus
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: Grose gazed round us in vain. Then where is he gone?
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: I know? Still less? Have you seen him before? Yes?
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: Once on the old tower. She could only look at
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: me harder. Do you mean he's a stranger? Oh? Very much.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: Yet you didn't tell me no for reasons. But now
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: that you've guessed, Missus Grose's round eyes encountered this charge, Ah,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: I haven't guessed, she said, very simply. How can I
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: if you don't imagine? I don't in the very least
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: you've seen him nowhere but on the tower, and on
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: this spot just now. Missus Grose looked round again. What
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: was he doing on the tower? Only standing there and
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: looking down at me? She thought a minute? Was he
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: a gentleman? I found I had no need to think. No,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: she gazed in deeper wonder. No. Then nobody about the place,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: nobody from the village, nobody, nobody. I didn't tell you,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: but I made sure. She breathed a vague relief. This
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: was oddly, so much to the good. It only went
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: indeed a little way. But if he isn't a gentleman,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: what is he? He's a horror, a horror. He's God
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: help me if I know what he is. Missus Grose
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: looked round once more. She fixed her eyes on the
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: duskier distance, then, pulling herself together, turned to me with
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: abrupt in consequence. It's time we should be a church.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: Oh I'm not fit for church. Won't it do you good?
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: It won't do them? I nodded at the house, the children.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: I can't leave them now. You're afraid, I spoke boldly.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: I'm afraid of him. Missus Grose's large face showed me
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: at this for the first time, the far away, faint
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: glimmer of a consciousness more acute, I somehow made out
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: in it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: had not given her, and that was as yet quite
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: obscure to me. It comes back to me that I
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: thought instantly if this is something I could get from her?
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: And I felt it to be connected with the desire
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: she presently showed no more. When was it on the tower?
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: About the middle of the month, at the same hour,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: almost at dark, said missus gross, Oh no, not nearly.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: I saw him as I see you. And how did
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: he get in? And how did he get out? I loved.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: I had no opportunity to ask him this evening. You see,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: I pursued. He has not been able to get in.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: He only peeps. I hope it will be confined to that.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: She had now let go of my hand. She turned
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: away a little. I waited an instant then I brought
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: out go to church, good bye. I must watch. Slowly
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: she faced me again, do you fear for them? We
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: met in another long look, don't you? Instead of answering,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: she came nearer to the window and for a minute
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: applied her face to the glass. You see how he
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: could see? I meanwhile went on. She didn't move. How
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: long was he here till I came out? I came
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: to meet him? Missus gross at last turned round, and
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: there was still more in her face. I couldn't have
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: come out, neither could I. I laughed again, but I
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: did come. I have my duty, so have I mine,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: she replied, after which she added, what is he like?
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: I've been dying to tell you, But he's like nobody, nobody,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: she echoed, he has no hat. Then, seeing in her
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: face that she already in this with a deeper dismay,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: found a touch of picture, I quickly added stroke to stroke.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: He has red hair, very red, close curling, and a
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: pale face, long in shape, with straight, good features, and little,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: His eyebrows are somehow darker. They look particularly arched, and
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: as if they might move a good deal. His eyes
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: are sharp, strange, awfully, but I only know clearly that
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: they're rather small and very fixed. His mouth's wide, and
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: his lips are thin, and except for his little whiskers,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: he's quite clean shaven. He gives me a sort of
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: sense of looking like an actor. An actor, it was
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: impossible to resemble one less at least than missus gross
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: at that moment, I've never seen one, but so I
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: supposed them. He's tall, active, erect, I continued, But never, no,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: never a gentleman. My companion's face had blanched as I
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: went on. Her round eyes started, and her mild mouth gaped.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: A gentleman, she gasped, confounded, stupefied. A gentleman. He you
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: know him? Then, she visibly tried to hold herself. But
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: he is handsome. I saw the way to help her remarkably,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: and dressed in somebody's clothes. They're smart, but they're not
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: his own. She broke into a breathless affirmative groan. There
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: the masters, I caught it up. You do know him,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: she faltered. But a second Quint, she cried, Quint, Peter, Quint,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: his own man, his valet, when he was here, When
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: the Master was gaping still but meeting me, she pieced
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: it altogether. He never wore his hat, but he did
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: wear well. There were waistcoats missed. They were both here
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: last year. Then the Master went, and Quint was alone.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: I followed, but halting a little alone alone with us. Then,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: as from a deeper depth in charge, she added, and
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: what came of him she hung fire so long that
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: I was still more mystified. He went too, she brought
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: out at last went where her expression at this became extraordinary.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: God knows where he died died. I almost shrieked. She
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: seemed fairly to square herself, planned herself more firmly to
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: utter the wonder of it. Yes, mister quint Is dead
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: end of chapter five, Chapter six. It took, of course,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: more than that particular passage to place us together in
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: presence of what we had now to live with, as
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: we could my dreadful liability to impressions of the order
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: so vividly exemplified, and my companion's knowledge, henceforth a knowledge
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: half consternation and half compassion of that liability. There had
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: been this evening after the revelation left me for an
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: hour so prostrate there had been for either of us,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: no attendance on any service, but a little service of
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: tears and vows, of prayers and promises, a climax to
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: the series of mutual challenges and pledges that had straightway
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: ensued on our retreating together to the schoolroom and shutting
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: ourselves up there to have everything out. The result of
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: our having everything out was simply to reduce our situation
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: to the last rigor of its elements. She herself had
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: in the house but the governess was in the governess's plight.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: Yet she accepted, without directly impugning my sanity, the truth
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: as I gave it to her, and ended by showing
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: me on this ground an awe stricken tenderness, an expression
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: of the sense of my more than questionable privilege of
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: which the very breath has remained with me, as that
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: of the sweetest of human charities. What was settled between
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: us accordingly that night was that we thought we might
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: bear things together. And I was not even sure that,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: in spite of her exemption, it was she who had
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: the best of the burden. I knew at this hour,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: I think, as well as I knew later what I
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: was capable of meeting to shelter my pupils. But it
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: took me some time to be wholly sure of what
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: my honest ally was prepared for to keep terms with
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: so compromising a contract. I was queer company enough quite
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: as queer as the company I received. But as I
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: trace over what we went through, I see how much
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: common ground we must have found in the one idea that,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: by good fortune could steady us. It was the idea,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: the second movement, that led me straight out, as I
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: may say, of the inner chamber of my dread, I
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: could take the air in the court at least, and
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: there Missus Grosse could join me perfectly. Can I recall
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: now the particular way strength came to me before we
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: separated for the night. We had gone over and over
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: every feature of what I had seen. He was looking
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: for some one else, you say, some one who was
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: not you. He was looking for little Miles. A portentous
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: clearness now possessed me. That's whom he was looking for.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: But how do you know? I know? I know, I know.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: My exultation grew, and you know, my dear, she didn't
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: deny this, but I required I felt not even so
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: much telling as that. She resumed in a moment. At
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: any rate, what if he should see him, little Miles,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: that's what he wants, She looked, immensely scared again, the
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: child Heaven forbid, the man he wants to appear to
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: them that he might was an awful conception, and yet
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: somehow I could keep it at bay. Which moreover, as
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: we lingered, there was what I succeeded in practically proving.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: I had an absolute certainty that I should see again
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: what I had already seen. But something within me said
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: that by offering myself bravely as the sole subject of
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: such experience, by accepting, by inviting, by surmounting it all
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: I should serve as an expiatory victim, and guard the
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: tranquility of my companions, the children in especial, I should
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: thus fence about and absolutely save. I recall one of
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: the last things I said that night to missus Grosse.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: his having been here in the time they were with him,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: the time they were with him, and his name, his presence,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: his history in any way, Oh, that little lady doesn't remember.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: She never heard or knew the circumstances of his death.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: I thought, with some intensity, perhaps not, but Myles would remember.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: Myles would know. Ah, don't try him. Broke from Missus Grose.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: I returned to the look she had given me. Don't
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: be afraid, I continued to think. It is rather odd
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: that he has never spoken of him, never by the
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: least allusion. And you tell me they were great friends.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: Oh it wasn't him, missus Gross, with emphasis, declared, it
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: was Quint's own fancy to play with him. I mean
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: to spoil him. She paused a moment, then she added,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: Quint was much too free. This gave me, straight from
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: my vision of his face, such a face, a sudden
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: sickness of disgust. Too free with my boy, too free
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: with every one. I forbore for the moment to analyze
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: this description further than by the reflection that a part
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: of it applied too several of the members of the household,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: of the half dozen maids and men who were still
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: of our small colony. But there was everything for our
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: apprehension in a lucky fact that no discomfortable legend, no
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: perturbation of Scullions, had ever within any one's memory, attached
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: to the kind old place. It had neither bad name
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: nor ill fame, and missus Gross most apparently only desired
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: to cling to me and to quake in silence. I
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: even put her the very last thing of all to
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: the test. It was when at midnight she had her
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: hand on the schoolroom door to take leave. I have
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: it from you, then, for it's of great importance that
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: he was definitely and admittedly bad. Oh not admittedly I
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: knew it, but the master didn't, and you never told him. Well.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: He didn't like tale bearing, he hated complaints. He was
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: were all right to him, he wouldn't be bothered with more.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: This squared well enough with my impressions of him. He
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: was not a trouble loving gentleman, nor so very particular
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: perhaps about some of the company he kept, All the same,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: I pressed my interlocutress. I promise you I would have
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: told she felt my discrimination. I dare say I was wrong,
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: But really I was afraid, afraid of what of things
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: that man could do. Quint was so clever, he was
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: so deep. I took this in still more than probably
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: I showed you weren't afraid of anything else, not of
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: his effect, his effect, she repeated, with a face of
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: anguish and waiting, while I faltered on innocent, little precious lives.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: They were in your charge. No, they were not in mine.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: She roundly and distressfully returned the Master believed in him
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: and placed him here because he was supposed not to
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: be well, and the country are so good for him,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: so he had everything to say. Yes, she let me
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: have it, even about them, them, that creature. I had
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: to smother a kind of howl, and you could bear it. No,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: I couldn't, and I can't now, And the poor woman
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: burst into tears. A rigid control from the next day was,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: as I have said, to follow them, Yet how often
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: and how passionately. For a week we came back together
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: to the subject, much as we had discussed it that
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: Sunday night. I was in the immediate later hours, in especial,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: for it may be imagined whether I slept still haunted
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: with the shadow of something she had not told me.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: word Missus Grosse had kept back. I was sure, moreover,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: by mourning, that this was not from a failure of frankness,
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: but because on every side there were fears. It seems
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: to me, indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: morrow sun was high, I had restlessly read into the
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: fact before us almost all the meaning they were to
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: receive from subsequent and more crude occurrences. What they gave me,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: above all was just the sinister figure of the living man.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: The dead one would keep a while, and of the
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: months he had continuously passed at bly, which added up
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: made a formidable stretch. The limit of this evil time
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: had arrived only when, on the dawn of a winter's morning,
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: Peter Quint was found by a laborer going to early
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: work Stone dead on the road from the village, a
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: catastrophe explained superficially at least by a visible wound to
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: his head, such a wound as might have been produced,
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: and as on the final evidence, had been by a
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: fatal slip in the dark and after leaving the public
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: house on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path altogether
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: at the bottom of which he lay the icy slope.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: The turn mistaken at night and in liquor accounted for
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: much practically in the end, and after the inquest and
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: boundless chatter for everything. But there had been matters in
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: his life, strange passages and perils, secret disorders, vices more
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: than suspected, that would have accounted for a good deal more.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: I scarce know how to put my story into words
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: that shall be a credible picture of my state of mind.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: But I was in these days literally able to find
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism the occasion
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: demanded of me. I now saw that I had been
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: asked for, sir, as admirable and difficult, and there would
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: be a greatness in letting it be seen, oh in
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: the right quarter, that I could succeed where many another
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: girl might have failed. It was an immense help to me,
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: I confess I rather applaud myself as I look back,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: that I saw my service so strongly and so simply.
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: I was there to protect and defend the little creatures
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: in the world, the most bereaved and the most lovable,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: the appeal of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: a deep constant ache of one's own committed heart. We
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: were cut off, really together, We were united in our danger.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: They had nothing but me, and I well I had them.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: It was, in short, a magnificent chance. This chance presented
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: itself to me in an image richly material. I was
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: a screen. I was to stand before them. The more
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: I saw, the less they would I began to watch
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: them in a stifled suspense, a disguised excitement that might well,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: had it continued too long, have turned to something like madness.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: What saved me, as I now see, was that it
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: turned to something else altogether. It didn't last a suspense.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: It was superseded by horrible proofs. Proofs. I say, yes,
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: from the moment I really took hold. This moment dated
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: from an afternoon hour that I had happened to spend
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: in the grounds with the younger of my pupils alone.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: We had left Miles indoors on the red cushion of
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: a deep window seat. He had wished to finish a book,
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: and I had been glad to encourage a purpose so
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: laudable in a young man whose only defect were as
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: an occasional excess of the restless. His sister, on the contrary,
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: had been alert to come out, and I strolled with
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: her half an hour seeking the shade, for the sun
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: was still high and the day exceptionally warm. I was
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: aware afresh with her as we went, of how like
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: her brother she contrived. It was the charming thing in
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: both children to let me alone without appearing, to drop me,
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: and to accompany me without appearing to surround. They were
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: ever importunate and yet never listless. My attention to them
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: all really went to seeing them amuse themselves immensely without me.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: This was a spectacle they seemed actively to prepare, and
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: that engaged me as an active admirer. I walked in
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: a world of their invention. They had no occasion whatever
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: to draw upon mine, so that my time was taken
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: only with being for them some remarkable person or thing
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: that the game of the moment required, and that was
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: merely thanks to my superior, my exalted stamp, a happy
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: and highly distinguished sinecure, I forget what I was on
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: the present occasion. I only remember that I was something
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: very important and very quiet, and that Flora was playing
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: very hard. Were on the edge of the lake, and
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: as we had lately begun geography, the lake was the
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: Sea of Azov. Suddenly, in these circumstances I became aware
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: that on the other side of the Sea of azof
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: we had an interested spectator. The way this knowledge gathered
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: in me was the strangest thing in the world. The strangest,
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: that is, except the very much stranger in which had
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: quickly merged itself. I had sat down with a piece
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: of work, for I was something or other. They could
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: sit on the old stone bench which overlooked the pond,
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: And in this position I began to take in with certitude,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: and yet without direct vision, the presence at a distance
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: of a third person. The old trees, the thick shrubbery
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: made a great and pleasant shade, but it was all
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: suffused with the brightness of the hot, still hour. There
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: was no ambiguity in anything, none whatever, at least in
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: the conviction. I, from one moment to another, found myself
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: forming as to what I should see straight before me
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: and across the lake. As a consequence of raising my eyes.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: They were attached at this juncture to the stitching in
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: which I was engaged, and I can feel once more
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: the spasm of my effort not to move them, till
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: I should so have steadied myself as to be able
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: to make up my mind what to do. There was
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: an alien object in view, a figure whose right of
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: presence I instantly passionately questioned. I recollect counting over perfectly
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: the possibilities, reminding myself that nothing was more natural, for instance,
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: than the appearance of one of the men about the place,
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: or even of a messenger, a postman, or a tradesman's
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: boy from the village. That reminder had as little effect
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: on my practical certitude as I was conscious, still even
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: without looking, of its having upon the character and attitude
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: of our visitor. Nothing was more natural than that these
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: things should be the other things that they absolutely were not.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: I of the positive identity of the apparition, I would
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: assure myself, as soon as a small clock of my
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: courage should have ticked out the right second. Meanwhile, with
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: an effort that was already sharp enough, I transferred my
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: eyes straight to little Laura, who at the moment was
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: about ten yards away. My heart had stood still for
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: an instant with the wonder and terror of the question
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: whether she too would see, And I held my breath
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: while I waited for what a cry from her, what
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: some sudden innocent sign, either of interest or of alarm,
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: would tell me. I waited, but nothing came then in
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: the first place, and there is something more dire in this,
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: I feel, than in anything I have to relate. I
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: was determined by a sense that within a minute all
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: sounds from her had previously dropped, and in the second
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: by the circumstance that also within the minute she had
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: in her play turned her back to the water. This
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: was her attitude when I at last looked at her,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: looked with the confirmed conviction that we were still together
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: under direct personal notice. She had picked up a small
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: flat piece of wood which happened to have in it
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: a little hoe that had evidently suggested to her the
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: idea of sticking in another fragment that might figure as
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: a mast and make the thing a boat. This second morsel.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: As I watched her, she was very markedly and intently
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: attempting to tighten in its place. My apprehension of what
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: she was doing sustained me so that after some seconds
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: I felt I was ready for more. Then again I
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: shifted my eyes. I face what I had to face.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: End of Chapter six, Chapter seven. I got hold of
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: missus Gross as soon after this as I could, And
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: I can give no intelligible account of how I fought
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: out the interval. Yet I still hear myself cry as
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: I fairly threw myself into her arms. They know it's
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: too monstrous, they know, they know, and what on earth?
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: I felt her incredulity as she held me. Why all
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: that we know? And heaven knows what else Besides. Then,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: as she released me, I made it out to her,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: made it out, perhaps only now with full coherency, even
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: to myself two hours ago in the garden I could
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: scarce articulate flora saw Missus Gros took it as she
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: might have taken a blow in the stomach. She has
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: told you she panted, not a word. That's the horror.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: She kept it to herself. The child of eight, that
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: child unutterable. Still for me was the stupefication of it.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: Missus Grose, of course, could only gait the wider then,
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: how do you know I was there? I saw with
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: my eyes saw that she was perfectly aware. Do you
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: mean aware of him?
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: No?
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: Of her? I was conscious as I spoke that I
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: looked prodigious things, for I got the slow reflection of
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: them in my companion's face. Another person this time, but
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: a figure of quite as unmistakable horror and evil, a
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: woman in black, pale and dreadful, with such an air
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: also and such a face. On the other side of
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: the lake. I was there with the child, quiet for
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: the hour, and in the midst of it she came. Came,
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: how from where from where they come from? She just
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: appeared and stood there, but not so near, and without
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: coming nearer. Oh, for the effect and the feeling. She
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: might have been as close as you, My friend, with
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: an odd impulse, fell back a step. Was she some
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: one you've never seen? Yes, but some one the child
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: has some one you have? Then to show how I
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: had thought it all out, my predecessor, the one who died,
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: Miss Jessel. Miss Jessel, you don't believe me, I pressed.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: She turned right and left in her distress. How can
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: you be sure? This drew from me in the state
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: of my nerves a flash of impatience. Then ask Flora.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: She's sure, but I had no sooner spoken than I
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: caught myself up. No, for God's sake, don't she'll say
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: she isn't She'll lie. Missus Gross was not too bewildered
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: instinctively to protest. Ah, how can you? Because I am clear,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: Flora doesn't want want me to know. It's only then
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: to spare you. No, No, there are depths, depths. The
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: more I go over it, the more I see in it,
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: and the more I see in it, the more I fear.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know what I don't see what I don't
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: fear missus Gross tried to keep up with me. You
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: mean you're afraid of seeing her again? Oh no, that's
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: nothing now. Then I explained, it's of not seeing her.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: But my companion only looked wain, I don't understand you why.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: It's that the child may keep it up, and that
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: the child assuredly will without my knowing it, had the
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: image of this possibility. Missus Gross for a moment collapsed,
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: yet presently to pull herself together again, as if from
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: the positive force of the sense of what should we
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: yield an inch? They would really be to give way
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: to dear, dear, we must keep our heads. And after all,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: if she doesn't mind it. She even tried a grim joke,
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: perhaps she likes it, like such things, a scrap of
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: an infant. Isn't it just a proof of her blessed innocence,
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: my friend bravely inquired. She brought me for the instant
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: almost round. Oh we must clutch at that, We must
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: cling to it. If it isn't a proof of what
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: you say, it's a proof of God knows what for.
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: The woman's a horror of horrors. Missus Gross at this
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: fixed her eyes amitted on the ground. Then at last
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: raising them, Tell me how you know? She said, Then
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: you admit it? What she was? I cried, Tell me
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: how you know? My friend simply repeated no. By seeing
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: her by the way she looked at you, do you
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: mean so wickedly? Dear me? No? I could have borne that.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: She gave me never a glance. She only fixed the child.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: Missus Gross tried to see it fixed her ah with
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: such awful eyes. She stared at mine as if they
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: might really resemble them? Do you mean of dislike? God?
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: Help us know of something much worse, worse than dislike?
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: This left her indeed at a loss, with a determination indescribable,
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: with a kind of fury of intention, I made her
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: turn pale intention to get hold of her. Missus Gross,
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: her eyes just lingering on mine, gave a shudder and
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: walked to the window, And while she stood there looking out,
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: I completed my statement, that's what Flora knows. After a
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: little she turned round. The person was in black, you say,
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: in mourning, rather poor, almost shabby, but yes, with extraordinary beauty.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: I now recognized to what I had at last, Stroke
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: by stroke brought the victim of my confidence, for she
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: quite visibly weighed this oh, handsome, very very, I insisted,
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: wonderfully handsome, but infamous. She slowly came back to me,
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: Miss Jessel was infamous. She once more took my hand
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: in both her own, holding it as tight, as if
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: to fortify me against the increase of alarm I might
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: draw from this disclosure they were both infamous. She finally said,
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: So for a little we faced it once more together,
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: and I found absolutely a degree of help in seeing
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: it now so straight. I appreciate, I said, the great
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: decency of your not having hitherto spoken. But the time
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: has certainly come to give me the whole thing. She
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: appeared to assent to this, but still only in silence,
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: seeing which I went on, I must have it now.
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: Of what did she die come? There was something between them,
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: There was everything. In spite of the difference, oh, of
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: their rank, their condition. She brought it woefully out. She
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: was a lady. I turned it over. I again saw, yes,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: she was al and he so dreadfully below, said missus gross.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: I felt that I doubtless needn't press too hard in
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: such company on the place of a servant in the scale.
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: But there was nothing to prevent an acceptance of my
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: companion's own measure of my predecessor's abasement. There was a
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: way to deal with that, and I dealt the more
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: readily for my full vision. On the evidence of our
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: employer's late, clever, good looking own man, impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved,
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: the fellow was a hound. Missus gross considered, as if
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: it were perhaps a little case for a sense of shades.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: I've never seen one like him. He did what he
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: wished with her, With them all it was as if
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: now in my friend's own eyes, Miss Jessel had again appeared.
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: I seemed, at any rate for an instant to see
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: their avocation of her as distinctly as I had seen
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: her by the pond, and I brought out with decision.
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: It must have been also what she wished. Missus Grocer's
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: face signified that it had been, indeed, But she said
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: at the same time, poor woman, she paid for it.
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: Then you do know what she died of? I asked, no,
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: I know nothing. I wanted not to know. I was
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: glad enough I didn't, and I thanked heaven she was
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: well out of this. Yet you had then your idea
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: of her real reason for leaving. Oh, yes, as to
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: that she couldn't have stayed fancy it here for a governess.
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: And afterward I imagined, and I still imagine. And what
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: I imagine is dreadful, not so dreadful as what I do,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: I replied, on which I must have shown her as
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: I was, indeed, but too conscious, a front of miserable defeat.
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: It brought out again all her compassion for me, and
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: at the renewed touch of her kindness, my power to
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: resist broke down. I burst, as I had the other time,
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: made her burst into tears. She took me to her
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: motherly breast, and my lamentation overflowed. I don't do it,
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: I sobbed in despair. I don't save or shield them.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: It's far worse than I dreamed. They're lost. End of
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: Chapter seven, Chapter eight. What I had said to missus
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: Grosse was true enough. There were in the matter I
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: had put before her depths and possibilities that I lacked
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: resolution to sound, so that when we met once more
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: in the wonder of it, we were of a common
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: mind about the duty of resistance to extravagant fancies. We
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: were to keep our heads if we should keep nothing
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: else difficult. Indeed, as that might be in the face
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: of what, in our prodigious experience was least to be questioned.
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: Late that night, while the house slept, we had another
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: talk in my room, when she went all the way
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: with me as to its being beyond doubt that I
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: had seen exactly what I had seen. To hold her
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: perfectly in the pinch of that I found, I had
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: only to ask her now if I had made it up.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: I came to be able to give of each of
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: the persons appearing to me a picture disclosing to the
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: last detail their special marks, a portrait on the exhibition
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: of which he had instantly recognized and named them. She wished,
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: of course, small blame to her to sink the whole subject,
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: and I was quick to assure her that my own
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: interest in it had now violently taken the form of
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: a search for the way to escape from it. I
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: encountered her on the ground of a probability that with
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: recurrence for recurrence, we took for granted I should get
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: used to my danger, distinctly professing that my personal exposure
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: had suddenly become the least of my discomforts. It was
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: my new suspicion that was intolerable, and yet even to
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: this complication, the later hours of the day had brought
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: a little ease. On leaving her after my first outbreak,
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: I had of course returned to my pupils, associating the
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: right remedy for my dismay with that sense of their charm,
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: which I had already found to be a thing I
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: could positively cultivate, and which had never failed me. Yet
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: I had simply, in other words, plunged afresh into Flora's
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: special society, and there become aware it was almost a
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: luxury that she could put her little conscious hand straight
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: upon the spot that ached. She had looked at me
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: in sweet speculation, and then had accused me to my
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: face of having cried. I had supposed I had brushed
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: away the ugly signs. But I could, literally, for the
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: time at all events, rejoice under this fathomless charity that
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: they had not entirely disappeared, to gaze into the depths
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: of blue of the child's eyes and pronounce their loveliness
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: a trick of premature cunning, as to be guilty of
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: abjure my judgment and so far as might be my agitation,
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: I couldn't abjure for merely wanting to. But I could
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: repeat to Missus Gross as I did there over and
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: over in the small hours, that with their voices in
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: the air, their pressure on one's heart, and their fragrant
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: faces against one's cheek, everything fell to the ground but
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: their incapacity, city and their beauty. It was a pity
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: that somehow to settle this once for all, I had
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: equally to re enumerate the signs of subtlety that in
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: the afternoon by the lake had made a miracle of
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: my show of self possession. It was a pity to
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: be obliged to reinvestigate the certitude of the moment itself
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: and repeat how it had come to me as a
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: revelation that the inconceivable communion I then surprised, was a
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: matter for either party of habit. It was a pity
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: that I should have had to quaver out again the
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: reasons for my not having, in my delusion so much
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: as question that the little girl saw our visitant even
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: as I actually saw Missus Grosse herself, and that she wanted,
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: by just so much as she did thus see to
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: make me suppose she didn't, and at the same time,
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: without showing anything, arrive at a guess as to whether
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: I myself did. It was a pity that I needed
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: once more to describe the portentous little activity by which
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: she sought to divert my attention, the perceptible increase of movement,
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: the greater intensity of play, the singing, the gabbling of nonsense,
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: and the invitation to romp. Yet if I had not
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: indulged to prove there was nothing in it in this review,
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: I should have missed the two or three dim elements
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: of comfort that still remained to me. I should not,
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: for the instance, have been able to ascerveate to my
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: friend that I was certain what was so much to
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: the good, that I at least had not betrayed myself.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: I should not have been prompted by stress of need,
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: by desperation of mind, I scarce know what to call it,
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: to invoke such further aid to intelligence as might spring
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: from pushing my colleague fairly to the wall. She had
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: told me, bit by bit under pressure a great deal,
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: but a small shifty spot on the wrong side of
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: it all still sometimes brushed my brow like the wing
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: of a bat, and I remember how on this occasion
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: for the sleeping house and the concentration alike of our
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: danger and our watch seemed to help. I felt the
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: importance of giving the last jerk to the curtain. I
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: don't believe anything so horrible, I recollect, saying no, let
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: us put it, definitely, my dear, that I don't. But
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: if I did, you know, there's a thing I should
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: require now, just without sparing you the least bit more. Oh,
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: not a scrap come to get out of you. What
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: was it you had in mind when in our distress
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: before Myles came back over the letter from his school,
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: you said, under my insistence, that you didn't pretend for him,
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: that he had not literally ever been bad. He has
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: not literally ever in these weeks that I have myself
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: lived with him and so closely watched him. He has
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: been an imperturbable little prodigy of delightful, lovable goodness. Therefore
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: you might perfectly have made the claim for him if
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: you had not, has it happened seen an exception to take?
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: What was your exception and to what passage in your
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: personal observation of him did you refer? It was a
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: dreadfully austere inquiry. But levity was not our note, And
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: at any rate, before the gray dawn admonished us to separate,
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: I had got my answer. What my friend had had
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: in mind proved to be immensely to the purpose. It
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: was neither more nor less than the circumstance that for
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: a period of several months Quint and the boy had
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: been perpetually together. It was, in fact the very appropriate
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: truth that she had ventured to criticize the propriety, to
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: hint at the incongruity of so close an alliance, and
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: even to go so far on the subject as a
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: frank overture to Miss Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with a
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: most strange manner, requested her to mind her business, and
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: the good woman had, on this directly approached little Miles.
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: What she had said to him, since I pressed, was
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: that she liked to see young gentlemen not forget their station.
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: I pressed again. Of course, at this you reminded him
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: that Quint was only a base menial, as you might say,
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: And it was his answer for one thing that was bad,
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: and for another thing. I waited. He repeated your words
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: to Quint. No, not that it's just what he wouldn't
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: she could still impress upon me. I was sure at
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: any rate. She added that he didn't. But he denied
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: certain occasions, What occasions when they had been about together,
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: quite as if Quint were his tutor and a very
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: grand one, and miss Jessel only for the little lady,
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: when he had gone off with the fellow I mean,
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: and spent hours with him. He then prevaricated about it.
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: He said he hadn't. Her assent was clear enough to
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: cause me to add in a moment, I see he lied. Oh,
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: missus Gross mumbled this was a suggestion that it didn't matter,
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: which indeed she backed up by a further remark. You see,
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: after all, Miss Jessel didn't mind. She didn't forbid him.
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: I considered, did he put that to you as a justification?
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: At this, she dropped again. No, he never spoke of it,
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: never mentioned her in connection with Quint. She saw visibly
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: flushing where I was coming out. Well, he didn't show anything,
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: he denied, she repeated. He denied, Lord, how I pressed
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: her now so that you could see he knew what
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: he was between the two wretches. I don't know. I
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: don't know, the poor woman groaned. You do know, you,
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: dear thing, I replied, Only you haven't my dreadful bodeness
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: of mind, And you keep back out of timidity and
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: modesty and delicacy. Even the impression that in the past,
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: when you had, without my aid to flounder about in silence,
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: most of all made you miserable. But I shall get
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: it out of you. Yet there was something in the
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: boy that suggested to you, I continued, that he covered
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: and concealed their relation. Oh, he couldn't prevent you're learning
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: the truth, I dare say, But heavens, I fell with vehemence,
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: a thinking what it shows that they must, to that
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: extent have succeeded in making of him. Ah nothing that's
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: not nice, now, missus, gross lugubriously pleaded. I don't wonder
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: you looked queer, I persisted, when I mentioned to you
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: the letter from his school. I doubt if I looked
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: as queer as you. She retorted with homely force. And
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: if he was so bad, then, as that comes to,
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: how is he such an angel? Now? Yes, indeed, and
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: if he was a fiend at school, how how how well?
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: I said, in my torment, you must put it to
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: me again, But I shall not be able to tell
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: you for some days only put it to me again,
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: I cried, in a way that made my friend stare.
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: There are directions in which I must not, for the
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: present let myself go. Meanwhile, I returned to her first example,
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: the one to which she had just previously referred of
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: the boy's happy capacity for an occasional slip. If quint
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: on your remonstrance at the time you speak of was
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: a base? Mean you one of the things Miles said
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: to you? I find myself guessing, was it you were another? Again?
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: Her admission was so adequate that I continued, And you
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: forgave him that, wouldn't you? Oh? Yes? And we exchanged
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: there in the stillness, a sound of the oddest amusement.
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: Then I went on, At all events, while he was
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: with the man, Miss Flora was with the woman. It
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: suited them all. It suited me too, I felt, only
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: too well, by which I mean that it suited exactly
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: the particularly deadly view I was in the very act
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: of forbidding myself to entertain. But I so far succeeded
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 1: in checking the expression of this view that I will
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: throw just here no further light on it than may
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: be offered by the mention of my final observation to
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: missus Grosse, his having lied and been impudent, Are I
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: confess less engaging specimens than I had hoped to have
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: from you, of the outbreak in him of the little
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: natural man? Still, I mused, they must do, for they
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: make me feel more than ever that I must watch.
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: It made me blush the next minute to see in
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: my friend's face how much more unreservedly she had forgiven
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: him than her anecdote struck me as presenting to my
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 1: own tenderness. An occasion for doing this came out when
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: at the schoolroom door, she quitted me, surely you don't
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: accuse him of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: from me. Ah, remember that until further evidence, I now
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: accuse nobody. Then, before shutting her out to go by
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: another passage to her own place, I must just wait.
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: I wound up end of chapter eight, Chapter nine. I
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed took
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: something from my consternation. A very few of them, in fact,
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: passing in constant sight of my pupils, without a fresh incident,
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: suffice to give to grievous fancies, and even to odious memories,
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: a kind of brush of the sponge. I have spoken
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: of the surrender to their extraordinary childish grace as a
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: thing I could actively cultivate, And it may be imagined
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: if I neglected now to address myself to this source,
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: for whatever it would yield, stranger than I can express,
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: certainly was the effort to struggle against my new lights.
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: It would doubtless have been, however, a greater attention still
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: had it not been so frequently successful. I used to
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: thought strange things about them, and the circumstances that these
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: things only made them more interesting, was not, by itself
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: a direct aid to keeping them in the dark. I
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: trembled lest they should see that they were so immensely
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: more interesting, putting things at the worst at all events,
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: as in meditation I so often did. Any clouding of
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: their innocence could only be blameless and foredoomed. As they
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: were a reason the more for taking risks. There were
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: moments when, by an irresistible impulse, I found myself catching
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: them up and pressing them to my heart. As soon
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: as I had done so, I used to say to myself,
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: what will they think of that? Doesn't it betray too much?
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 1: It would have been easy to get into a sad,
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: wild tangle about how much I might betray. But the
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: real account I feel of the hours of peace that
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 1: I could still enjoy was that the immediate charm of
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: my companions was a beguilement, still effective even under the
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: shadow of the possibility that it was studied for if
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 1: it occurred to me that I might occasionally excite suspicion
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: by the little outbreaks of my shopper passion for them,
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: so too, I remember wondering if I mightn't see a
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: queerness and the traceable increase of their own demencets. They
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond of me, which,
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 1: after all I could reflect, was no more than a
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: graceful response in children perpetually bowed over and hugged. The
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: homage of which they were so lavish, succeeded in truth
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: for my nerves quite as well as if I never
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: appeared to myself, as I may say, literally, to catch
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: them at a purpose in it they had never, I think,
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: wanted to do so many things for their poor protectress.
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: I mean though they got their lessons better and better,
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: which was naturally what would please her most in the
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: way of diverting, entertaining, surprising her, reading her passages, telling
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: her stories, acting her charades, pouncing out at her in
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: disguise as animals and historical characters, and above all astonishing
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: her by the pieces they had secretly got by heart
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: and could interminably recite. I should never get to the
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: bottom were I to let myself go even now of
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: the prodigious private commentary, all under still more private correction
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: with which in these days I overscored their full hours.
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: They had shown me from the first a facility for everything,
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 1: a general faculty which, taking a fresh start, achieved remarkable flights.
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: They got their little tasks as if they loved them,
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: and indulged from the mere exuberance of the gift in
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: the most unimposed little miracles of memory. They not only
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 1: popped out at me as tigers and as romans, but
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: as she expeediburians, astronomers, and navigators. This was so singularly
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: the case that it had presumably much to do with
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: the fact as to which at the present day I
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: am at a loss for a different explanation. I allude
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 1: to my unnatural composure on the subject of another school
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: for miles. What I remember is that I was content
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 1: not for the time to open the question, and that
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: contentment must have sprung from the sense of his perpetually
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: striking show of cleverness. He was too clever for a
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: bad governess, for a parson's daughter to spoil. And the strangest,
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: if not the brightest, thread in the pensive embroidery I
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: just spoke of, was the impression I might have got
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: if I had dared to work it out, that he
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: was under some influence, operating in his small intellectual life
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 1: as a tremendous incitement. If it was easy to reflect, however,
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: that such a boy could postpone school, it was at
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: least as marked that for such a boy to have
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: been kicked out by a schoolmaster was a mystification without end.
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 1: Let me add that in their company now, and I
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: was careful almost never to be out of it, I
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 1: could follow no scent very far. We lived in a
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: cloud of music and love and success and private theatricals.
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: The musical sense in each of the children was of
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 1: the quickest, but the elder, in especial had a marvelous
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: knack of catching and repeating the school room piano broke
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: into all gruesome fancy, and when that failed, there were
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: confabulations and corners, with a sequel of one of them
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: going out in the highest spirits in order to come
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: in as something new. I had had brothers myself, and
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: it was no revelation to me that little girls could
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: be slavish idolaters of little boys. What surpassed everything was
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: that there was a little boy in the world who
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: could have, for the inferior age, sex and intelligence so
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: fine a consideration. They were extraordinarily at one. And to
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 1: say that they never either quarreled or complained is to
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 1: make the note of praise coarse for their quality of sweetness. Sometimes, indeed,
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: when I dropped into coarseness, I perhaps came across traces
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: of little understandings between them, by which one of them
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: should keep me occupied while the other slipped away. There
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: is a naive's side, I suppose, in all diplomacy. But
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: if my pupils practiced upon me, it were surely with
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: the minimum of grossness. It was all in their other
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: quarter that, after a lull the grossness broke out. I
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: find that I really hang back, but I must take
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: my plunge, and going on with the record of what
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: was hideous at Blie, I not only challenged the most
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: liberal faith for which I little care, But and this
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: is another matter, I renew what I myself suffered. I
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: again pushed my way through it to the end. There
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: came suddenly an hour after which, as I look back,
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: the affair seems to me to have been all pure suffering.
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 1: But I have at least reached the heart of it.
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 1: And the straightest road out is doubtless to advance. One evening,
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: with nothing to lead up or to prepare it, I
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 1: felt the cold touch of the impression that had breathed
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: on me the night of my arrival, and which much
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: lighter than as I have mentioned, I should probably have
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: made little of in memory. Had my subsequent sojourn been
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: less agitated. I had not gone to bed. I sat
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 1: reading by a couple of candles. There was a room
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 1: full of old books, apply last century fiction, some of
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: it which to the extent of a distinctly deprecated renown,
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 1: but never to so much as that of a stray specimen.
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: Had reached the sequestered home and appealed to the unavowed
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: curiosity of my youth. I remember that the book I
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: had in my hand was Fielding's Amelia, also that I
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: was wholly awake. I recall further both a general conviction
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: that it was horribly late, and a particular objection to
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 1: looking at my watch. I figure finally that the white
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 1: curtain draping in the fashion of those days the head
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: of Flora's little bed shouted, as I had assured myself
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: long before, the perfection of childish rest. I recollect in
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 1: short that though I was deeply interested in my author,
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 1: I found myself at the turn of a page, and
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 1: with his spell all scattered, looking straight up from him
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: and hard at the door of my room. There was
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: a moment during which I listened, reminded of the faint
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: sense I had had the first night of there being
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 1: something undefinably astir in the house, and noted the soft
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: breath of the open casement. Just move the half drawn blind. Then,
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: with all the marks of a deliberation that must have
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: seemed magnificent had there been any one to admire it,
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: I laid down my book, rose to my feet, and
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: taking a candle, went straight out of the room and
• 2:22:45
  Speaker 1: from the passage, on which my light made little impression,
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: noiselessly closed and locked the door. I can say now
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: neither were determined, nor what guided me, But I went
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: straight along the lobby, holding my candle high, till I
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: came within sight of the tall window that presided over
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: the great turn of the staircase. At this point I
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 1: precipitately found myself aware of three things. They were practically simultaneous,
• 2:23:23
  Speaker 1: yet they had flashes of succession. My candle, under a
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: bold flourish, went out, and I perceived by the uncovered
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: window that the yielding dusk of earliest morning rendered it
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 1: unnecessary without it. The next instant I saw that there
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: was some one on the stair I speak of sequences,
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: but I required no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: for a third encounter with Quint. The apparition had reached
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: the landing half way up, and was therefore on the
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 1: spot nearest the window were at sight of me. It
• 2:24:10
  Speaker 1: stopped short and fixed me exactly as it had fixed
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: me from the tower and from the garden. He knew
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: me as well as I knew him, And so, in
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: the cold, faint twilight, with a glimmer in the high glass,
• 2:24:29
  Speaker 1: and another on the polish of the oak stair below.
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: We faced each other in our common intensity. He was absolutely,
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 1: on this occasion a living, detestable, dangerous presence. But that
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 1: was not the wonder of wonders. I reserved this distinction
• 2:24:56
  Speaker 1: for quite another circumstance, the circumstance that dread had unmistakably
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 1: quitted me, and that there was nothing in me there
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 1: that didn't meet and measure him. I had plenty of
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: anguish after the extraordinary moment, but I had thanked God
• 2:25:16
  Speaker 1: no terror, and he knew I had not. I found
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: myself at the end of an instant magnificently aware of this.
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 1: I felt in a fierce rigor of confidence that if
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: I stood my ground a minute, I should cease for
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: the time at least to have him to reckon with
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 1: and during the minute. Accordingly, the thing was as human
• 2:25:45
  Speaker 1: and hideous as a real interview, hideous just because it
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 1: was human, as human as to have met alone in
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: the small hours in a sleeping house, some enemy, some adventurer,
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 1: some criminal. It was the dead silence of our long
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 1: gaze at such close quarters that gave the whole horror,
• 2:26:12
  Speaker 1: huge as it was its only note of the unnatural.
• 2:26:18
  Speaker 1: If I had met a murderer in such a place
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 1: and at such an hour, we still at least would
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 1: have spoken. Something would have passed in life between us.
• 2:26:30
  Speaker 1: If nothing had passed, one of us would have moved.
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 1: The moment was not so prolonged that it would have
• 2:26:38
  Speaker 1: taken but little more to make me doubt if even
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 1: I were in life. I can't express what followed it,
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 1: save by saying that the silence itself, which was indeed
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 1: in a manner an attestation of my strength, became the
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 1: element into which I saw the figure disappear, in which
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: I definitely saw it turn as I might have seen
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: the low wretch to which it had once belonged, turn
• 2:27:10
  Speaker 1: on receipt of an order, and pass, with my eyes
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: on the villinous back that no hunch could have more disfigured,
• 2:27:21
  Speaker 1: straight down the staircase and into the darkness in which
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 1: the next bend was lost. End of Chapter nine, Chapter ten.
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: I remained awhile at the top of the stair but
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 1: with the effect presently of understanding that when my visitor
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 1: had gone, he had gone. Then I returned to my room.
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: The foremost thing I saw there by the light of
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: the candle I had left burning. Was that Flora's little
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: bed empty. And on this I caught my breath with
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 1: all the terror that five minutes before I had been
• 2:28:08
  Speaker 1: able to resist. I dashed at the place in which
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 1: I had left her lying, and over which for the
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 1: small silk counterpane and the sheets were disarranged. The white
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 1: curtains had been deceivingly pulled forward. Then my step, to
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: my unutterable relief, produced an answering sound. I perceived an
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 1: agitation of the window blind, and the child ducking down
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: emerged Rosalie from the other side of it. She stood
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 1: there in so much of her candor and so little
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: of her nightgown, with her pink bare feet and the
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 1: golden glow of her curls. She looked intensely grave, And
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 1: I had never had such a sense of losing an
• 2:28:55
  Speaker 1: advantage acquired, the thrill of which had just been so
• 2:28:59
  Speaker 1: prodigious as on my consciousness that she addressed me with
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 1: a reproach, you not he where have you been? Instead
• 2:29:11
  Speaker 1: of challenging her own irregularity. I found myself arraigned and explaining.
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 1: She herself explained for that matter with the loveliest eagerest simplicity.
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 1: She had known suddenly as she lay there that I
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 1: was out of the room, and had jumped up to
• 2:29:30
  Speaker 1: see what had become of me. I had dropped, with
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 1: the joy of her reappearance, back into my chair, feeling
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: then and then only a little faint, and she had
• 2:29:44
  Speaker 1: pattered straight over to me, thrown herself upon my knee,
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 1: given herself to be held with the flame of the
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: candle foe in the wonderful little face that was still
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 1: flushed with sleep. I remember closing my eyes an instant, yielding,
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 1: consciously as before, the excess of something beautiful that shone
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 1: out of the blue of her own. You were looking
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 1: for me out of the window, I said, you thought
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: I might be walking in the grounds? Well, you know,
• 2:30:23
  Speaker 1: I thought some one was. She never blanched as she
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: smiled out that at me. Oh, how I looked at
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: her now, and did you see any one? Ah? No,
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: She returned almost with the full privilege of childish in consequence, resentfully,
• 2:30:47
  Speaker 1: though with a long sweetness in her little drawl of
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 1: the negative. At that moment, in the state of my nerves,
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 1: I absolutely believed she lied. And if if I once
• 2:31:00
  Speaker 1: more closed my eyes, it was before the dazzle of
• 2:31:04
  Speaker 1: the three or four possible ways in which I might
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 1: take this up. One of these, for a moment tempted
• 2:31:11
  Speaker 1: me with such singular intensity that to withstand it I
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 1: must have gripped my little girl with a spasm that
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 1: wonderfully she submitted to without a cry or sign of fright.
• 2:31:25
  Speaker 1: Why not break out at her on the spot and
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 1: have it all over? Give it to her straight and
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 1: her lovely little lighted face. You see, you see, you
• 2:31:36
  Speaker 1: know that you do, and that you already quite suspect
• 2:31:40
  Speaker 1: I believe it. Therefore, why not frankly confess it to
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 1: me so that we may at least live with it
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 1: together and learn, perhaps in the strangeness of our fate,
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 1: where we are and what it means. This elicitation dropped
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: as it came. If I could immediately have succumbed to it,
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 1: I might have spared myself. Well you'll see what Instead
• 2:32:10
  Speaker 1: of succumbing, I sprang again to my feet, looked at
• 2:32:14
  Speaker 1: her bed, and took a helpless middle way. Why did
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: you pull the curtain over the place to make me
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 1: think you were still there? Flora luminously considered, after which,
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: with her little divine smile, because I don't like to
• 2:32:32
  Speaker 1: frighten you. But if I had, by your idea, gone out,
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: she absolutely declined to be puzzled. She turned her eyes
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: to the flame of the candle, as if the question
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 1: were as irrelevant or at any rate as impersonal as
• 2:32:51
  Speaker 1: missus Marsett or nine times nine. Oh, but you know,
• 2:32:56
  Speaker 1: she quite adequately answered that you might come back, you dear,
• 2:33:01
  Speaker 1: and that you have. And after a little when she
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 1: had gotten to bed, I had for a long time,
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 1: by almost sitting on her to hold her hand, to
• 2:33:14
  Speaker 1: prove that I recognized the pertinence of my return. You
• 2:33:17
  Speaker 1: imagine the general complexion from that moment of my nights.
• 2:33:22
  Speaker 1: I repeatedly sat up till I didn't know when I
• 2:33:26
  Speaker 1: selected moments when my roommate unmistakably slept and stealing out,
• 2:33:34
  Speaker 1: took noiseless turns in the passage, and even pushed as
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 1: far as to where I had last met Quint. But
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 1: I never met him there again, And I may as
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 1: well say at once that I, on no other occasion
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 1: saw him in the house. I just missed on the staircase.
• 2:33:54
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, a different adventure, looking down at
• 2:33:59
  Speaker 1: from I once recognized the presence of a woman seated
• 2:34:05
  Speaker 1: on one of the lower steps, with her back presented
• 2:34:08
  Speaker 1: to me, her body half bowed and her head in
• 2:34:13
  Speaker 1: an attitude of woe in her hands. I had been
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: there but an instant. However, when she vanished without looking
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 1: round at me, I knew none the less exactly what
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 1: dreadful face she had to show, And I wondered whether,
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: if instead of being above, I had been below, I
• 2:34:37
  Speaker 1: should have had for going up the same nerve I
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 1: had lately shone quint Well. There continued to be plenty
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 1: of chance for nerve. On the eleventh night, after my
• 2:34:49
  Speaker 1: latest encounter with that gentleman, they were all numbered. Now
• 2:34:54
  Speaker 1: I had an alarm that perilously skirted it, and that, indeed,
• 2:34:58
  Speaker 1: from the particular qualit of its unexpectedness, proved quite my
• 2:35:03
  Speaker 1: sharpest shock. It was precisely the first night during this
• 2:35:07
  Speaker 1: series that, weary with watching, I had felt that I might, again,
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 1: without laxity, lay myself down at my old hour. I
• 2:35:18
  Speaker 1: slept immediately, and as I afterward knew, till about one o'clock.
• 2:35:25
  Speaker 1: But when I woke, it was to sit straight up,
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 1: as completely roused as if a hand had shook me.
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 1: I had left a light burning, but it was now out,
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: and I felt an instant's certainty that Flora had extinguished it.
• 2:35:44
  Speaker 1: This brought me to my feet and straight in the
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: darkness to her bed, which I found she had left.
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 1: A glance at the window enlightened me further, and the
• 2:35:57
  Speaker 1: striking of a match completed the picture. The child had
• 2:36:02
  Speaker 1: again got up, this time blowing out the taper, and
• 2:36:07
  Speaker 1: had again, for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 1: in behind the blind, and was peering out into the
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 1: night that she now saw as she had not. I
• 2:36:22
  Speaker 1: had satisfied myself the previous time. Was proved to me
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 1: by the fact that she was disturbed, neither by my
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 1: re illumination nor by the haste I made to get
• 2:36:35
  Speaker 1: into slippers and into a rap Hidden, protected, absorbed, she
• 2:36:42
  Speaker 1: evidently rested on the sill the casement, opened forward, and
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 1: gave herself up. There was a great still moon to
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 1: help her, and this fact had counted in my quick decision.
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 1: She was face to face with the apparition we had
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: met at the lake, and could now communicate with it,
• 2:37:03
  Speaker 1: as she had not then been able to do. What
• 2:37:07
  Speaker 1: I on my side had to care for was without
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 1: disturbing her to reach from the corridor some other window
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 1: in the same quarter. I got to the door without
• 2:37:20
  Speaker 1: her hearing me. I got out of it, closed it,
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 1: and listened from the other side for some sound from her.
• 2:37:31
  Speaker 1: While I stood in the passage, I had my eyes
• 2:37:35
  Speaker 1: on her brother's door, which was but ten steps off,
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 1: and which indescribably produced in me a renewal of the
• 2:37:44
  Speaker 1: strange impulse that I lately spoke of as my temptation.
• 2:37:49
  Speaker 1: What if I should go straight in and march to
• 2:37:52
  Speaker 1: his window? What if, by risking to his boyish bewilderment
• 2:37:58
  Speaker 1: a revelation of my motive, I should throw across the
• 2:38:02
  Speaker 1: rest of the mystery the long halter of my boldness.
• 2:38:07
  Speaker 1: This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to
• 2:38:10
  Speaker 1: his threshold and pause again. I preter naturally listened. I
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 1: figured to myself what might portentously be. I wondered if
• 2:38:21
  Speaker 1: his bed were also empty, and he too was secretly
• 2:38:25
  Speaker 1: at watch. It was a deep, soundless minute at the
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 1: end of which my impulse failed. He was quiet, He
• 2:38:38
  Speaker 1: might be innocent. The risk was hideous. I turned away.
• 2:38:44
  Speaker 1: There was a figure in the grounds, a figure prowling
• 2:38:48
  Speaker 1: for a sight. The visitor with whom Flora was engaged,
• 2:38:54
  Speaker 1: but it was not the visitor most concerned with my boy.
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 1: I hesitated afresh, but on other grounds, and only for
• 2:39:03
  Speaker 1: a few seconds. Then I had made my choice. There
• 2:39:09
  Speaker 1: were empty rooms at ply, and it was only a
• 2:39:13
  Speaker 1: question of choosing the right one. The right one suddenly
• 2:39:17
  Speaker 1: presented itself to me as the lower one. Though high
• 2:39:21
  Speaker 1: above the gardens, in the solid corner of the house
• 2:39:25
  Speaker 1: that I have spoken of as the Old Tower, this
• 2:39:29
  Speaker 1: was a large square chamber arranged with some state as
• 2:39:34
  Speaker 1: a bedroom, the extravagant size of which made it so
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 1: inconvenient that it had, not, for years, though kept by
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 1: Missus Gross in exemplary order, been occupied. I had often
• 2:39:49
  Speaker 1: admired it, and I knew my way about in it.
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 1: I had only, after just faltering at the first chill
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: gloom of its disuse, to pass across it an unbolt
• 2:40:03
  Speaker 1: as quietly as I could one of the shutters. Achieving
• 2:40:08
  Speaker 1: this transit, I uncovered the glass without a sound, and
• 2:40:12
  Speaker 1: applying my face to the pane, was able the darkness,
• 2:40:17
  Speaker 1: without being much less than within, to see that I
• 2:40:21
  Speaker 1: commanded the right direction. Then I saw something more. The
• 2:40:28
  Speaker 1: moon made the night extraordinarily penetrable, and showed me on
• 2:40:32
  Speaker 1: the lawn a person diminished by distance, who stood there,
• 2:40:39
  Speaker 1: motionless and as if fascinated, looking up to where I
• 2:40:44
  Speaker 1: had appeared, looking that is not so much straight at
• 2:40:49
  Speaker 1: me as at something that was apparently above me. There
• 2:40:57
  Speaker 1: was clearly another person above me. There was a person
• 2:41:01
  Speaker 1: on the tower. But the presence on the lawn was
• 2:41:06
  Speaker 1: not in the least what I had conceived and had
• 2:41:09
  Speaker 1: confidently hurried to meet. The presence on the lawn. I
• 2:41:15
  Speaker 1: felt sick as I made it out. Here's poor little
• 2:41:20
  Speaker 1: Miles himself. End of Chapter ten, Chapter eleven. It was
• 2:41:29
  Speaker 1: not till late next day that I spoke to missus Grosse,
• 2:41:33
  Speaker 1: the rigor with which I kept my pupils in sight,
• 2:41:36
  Speaker 1: making it often difficult to meet her privately, And the
• 2:41:40
  Speaker 1: more as we each felt the importance of not provoking
• 2:41:44
  Speaker 1: on the part of the servants quite as much as
• 2:41:48
  Speaker 1: on that of the children, any suspicion of a secret
• 2:41:52
  Speaker 1: flurry or that of a discussion of mysteries, I grew
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 1: a great security in this particular from her mere smooth aspect.
• 2:42:04
  Speaker 1: There was nothing in her fresh face to pass on
• 2:42:07
  Speaker 1: to others my horrible confidences. She believed me. I was
• 2:42:13
  Speaker 1: sure absolutely. If she hadn't, I don't know what would
• 2:42:19
  Speaker 1: have become of me, For I couldn't have borne the
• 2:42:22
  Speaker 1: business alone. But she was a magnificent monument to the
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 1: blessing of a want of imagination. And if she could
• 2:42:31
  Speaker 1: see in our little charges nothing but their beauty and amiability,
• 2:42:37
  Speaker 1: their happiness and cleverness, she had no direct communication with
• 2:42:43
  Speaker 1: the sources of my trouble. If they had been at
• 2:42:46
  Speaker 1: all visibly blighted or battered, she would doubtless have grown
• 2:42:51
  Speaker 1: on tracing it back, haggard enough to match them as
• 2:42:57
  Speaker 1: matters stood. However, I could feel her when she surveyed them,
• 2:43:04
  Speaker 1: with her large white arms folded and the habit of
• 2:43:08
  Speaker 1: serenity in all her look thanked the Lord's mercy that
• 2:43:13
  Speaker 1: if they were ruined, the pieces would still serve flights
• 2:43:17
  Speaker 1: of fancy, gave place in her mind to a steady
• 2:43:21
  Speaker 1: fireside glow. And I had already begun to perceive, how
• 2:43:26
  Speaker 1: with the development of the conviction that as time went
• 2:43:31
  Speaker 1: on without a public accident, our young things could after
• 2:43:36
  Speaker 1: all look out for themselves. She addressed her greatest solicitude
• 2:43:42
  Speaker 1: to the sad case presented by their instructress, that for
• 2:43:48
  Speaker 1: myself was a sound simplification. I could engage that to
• 2:43:54
  Speaker 1: the world my face should tell no tales, but it
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: would have been in the conditions an immense added strain
• 2:44:04
  Speaker 1: to find myself anxious about hers. At the hour I
• 2:44:08
  Speaker 1: now speak of, she had joined me under pressure on
• 2:44:12
  Speaker 1: the terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the
• 2:44:16
  Speaker 1: afternoon sun was now agreeable, and we sat there together,
• 2:44:22
  Speaker 1: while before us, at a distance, but within call if
• 2:44:26
  Speaker 1: we wished, their children strolled to and fro in one
• 2:44:31
  Speaker 1: of their most manageable moods. They moved slowly in unison
• 2:44:37
  Speaker 1: below us over the lawn, the boy as they went,
• 2:44:42
  Speaker 1: reading aloud from a story book, and passing his arm
• 2:44:45
  Speaker 1: round his sister to keep her quite in touch. Missus
• 2:44:50
  Speaker 1: Gross watched them with positive placidity. Then I caught the
• 2:44:55
  Speaker 1: suppressed intellectual creek, with which she conscientiously returned to take
• 2:45:01
  Speaker 1: from me a view of the back of the tapestry.
• 2:45:06
  Speaker 1: I had made her a receptacle of lurid things. But
• 2:45:10
  Speaker 1: there was an odd recognition of my superiority, my accomplishments,
• 2:45:16
  Speaker 1: and my function in her patience. Under my pain, she
• 2:45:22
  Speaker 1: offered her mind to my disclosures, as had I wished
• 2:45:26
  Speaker 1: to mix a witch's broth and proposed it with assurance,
• 2:45:30
  Speaker 1: she would have held out a large, clean saucepan. This
• 2:45:34
  Speaker 1: had become thoroughly her attitude by the time that in
• 2:45:38
  Speaker 1: my recital of the events of the night I reached
• 2:45:42
  Speaker 1: the point of what Myles had said to me, when,
• 2:45:45
  Speaker 1: after seeing him at such a monstrous hour, almost on
• 2:45:50
  Speaker 1: the very spot where he happened now to be, I
• 2:45:54
  Speaker 1: had gone down to bring him in, choosing then at
• 2:45:59
  Speaker 1: the window with a concentrated need of not alarming the house,
• 2:46:04
  Speaker 1: rather that method than a signal more resonant. I had
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 1: left her meanwhile in little doubt of my small hope
• 2:46:13
  Speaker 1: of representing with success, even to her actual sympathy, my
• 2:46:18
  Speaker 1: sense of the real splendor of the little inspiration with which,
• 2:46:23
  Speaker 1: after I had got him into the house, the boy
• 2:46:26
  Speaker 1: met my final articulate challenge. As soon as I appeared
• 2:46:31
  Speaker 1: in the moonlight on the terrace, he had come to
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 1: me as straight as possible, on which I had taken
• 2:46:37
  Speaker 1: his hand without a word, and led him through the
• 2:46:41
  Speaker 1: dark spaces up the staircase where quint had so hungrily
• 2:46:46
  Speaker 1: hovered for him, along the lobby where I had listened
• 2:46:49
  Speaker 1: and trembled, and so to his forsaken room. Not a
• 2:46:55
  Speaker 1: sound on the way had passed between us, and I wondered,
• 2:47:01
  Speaker 1: oh how I had wondered, if he were groping about
• 2:47:06
  Speaker 1: in his little mind for something plausible and not too grotesque,
• 2:47:12
  Speaker 1: it would tax his invention certainly, And I felt this
• 2:47:17
  Speaker 1: time over his real embarrassment a curious thrill of triumph.
• 2:47:25
  Speaker 1: It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable. He couldn't
• 2:47:29
  Speaker 1: play any longer at innocence, So how the deuce would
• 2:47:33
  Speaker 1: he get out of it? There beat in me, indeed,
• 2:47:38
  Speaker 1: with the passionate throb of this question, an equal dumb
• 2:47:41
  Speaker 1: appeal as to how the deuce I should I was
• 2:47:47
  Speaker 1: confronted at last, as never yet, with all the risk
• 2:47:52
  Speaker 1: attached even now to sounding my own horrid note. I remember,
• 2:47:57
  Speaker 1: in fact, that as we pushed in to his little chamber,
• 2:48:02
  Speaker 1: where the bed had not been slept in it all,
• 2:48:04
  Speaker 1: and the window uncovered to the moonlight made the place
• 2:48:09
  Speaker 1: so clear that there was no need of striking a match.
• 2:48:14
  Speaker 1: I remember how I suddenly dropped sank upon the edge
• 2:48:18
  Speaker 1: of the bed from the force of the idea that
• 2:48:21
  Speaker 1: he must know how he, really, as they say, had
• 2:48:27
  Speaker 1: me he could do what he liked with all his
• 2:48:31
  Speaker 1: cleverness to help him, so long as I should continue
• 2:48:35
  Speaker 1: to defer to the old tradition of the criminality of
• 2:48:39
  Speaker 1: those caretakers of the young who minister to superstitions and fears.
• 2:48:45
  Speaker 1: He had me, indeed, and in a cleft stick. For
• 2:48:51
  Speaker 1: who would ever absolve me? Who would consent that I
• 2:48:54
  Speaker 1: should go unhung? If by the faintest tremor of an
• 2:48:59
  Speaker 1: overture I we was the first to introduce into our
• 2:49:03
  Speaker 1: perfect intercourse an element so dire. No, No, it was
• 2:49:11
  Speaker 1: useless to attempt to convey to missus grosse jest, as
• 2:49:15
  Speaker 1: it is scarcely less so to attempt to suggest here
• 2:49:20
  Speaker 1: how in our short stiff brush in the dark he
• 2:49:24
  Speaker 1: fairly shook me with admiration. I was, of course, thoroughly
• 2:49:28
  Speaker 1: kind and merciful. Never never yet had I placed on
• 2:49:34
  Speaker 1: his little shoulders hands of such tenderness as those with which,
• 2:49:40
  Speaker 1: while I rested against the bed, I held him there
• 2:49:44
  Speaker 1: well under fire. I had no alternative but in form
• 2:49:49
  Speaker 1: at least to put it to him. You must tell
• 2:49:53
  Speaker 1: me now and all the truth. What did you go
• 2:49:57
  Speaker 1: out for? What were you doing there. I can still
• 2:50:04
  Speaker 1: see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful eyes,
• 2:50:09
  Speaker 1: and the uncovering of his little teeth shine to me
• 2:50:12
  Speaker 1: in the dusk. If I tell you why, will you understand?
• 2:50:20
  Speaker 1: My heart at this leaped into my mouth. Would he
• 2:50:26
  Speaker 1: tell me why? I found no sound on my lips
• 2:50:30
  Speaker 1: to press it, and I was aware of replying only
• 2:50:33
  Speaker 1: with a vague, repeated, grimacing nod. He was gentleness itself,
• 2:50:40
  Speaker 1: and while I wagged my head at him, he stood
• 2:50:44
  Speaker 1: there more than ever a little fairy prince. It was
• 2:50:48
  Speaker 1: his brightness, indeed, that gave me a respite. Would it
• 2:50:52
  Speaker 1: be so great if he were really going to tell me? Well?
• 2:50:56
  Speaker 1: He said at last, just exactly in all order, that
• 2:51:00
  Speaker 1: you should do this? Do what think me? For a change? Bad?
• 2:51:11
  Speaker 1: I shall never forget the sweetness and gaiety with which
• 2:51:15
  Speaker 1: he brought out the word, nor how on top of
• 2:51:19
  Speaker 1: it he bent forward and kissed me. It was practically
• 2:51:24
  Speaker 1: the end of everything. I met his kiss, and I
• 2:51:29
  Speaker 1: had to make, while I folded him for a minute
• 2:51:32
  Speaker 1: in my arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry.
• 2:51:38
  Speaker 1: He had given exactly the account of himself that permitted
• 2:51:42
  Speaker 1: least of my going behind it. And it was only
• 2:51:46
  Speaker 1: with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it, that,
• 2:51:49
  Speaker 1: as I presently glanced about the room, I could say,
• 2:51:54
  Speaker 1: then you didn't undress at all? He fairly glittered in
• 2:51:57
  Speaker 1: the gloom, not at all. I sat up and read.
• 2:52:04
  Speaker 1: And when did you go down at midnight? When I'm bad?
• 2:52:11
  Speaker 1: I am bad? I see, I see it's charming. But
• 2:52:17
  Speaker 1: how could you be sure I would know it? Oh?
• 2:52:22
  Speaker 1: I arranged that with Flora. His answers rang out with
• 2:52:27
  Speaker 1: a readiness. She was to get up and look out,
• 2:52:32
  Speaker 1: which is what she did do. It was I who
• 2:52:35
  Speaker 1: fell into the trap, so she disturbed you, and to
• 2:52:42
  Speaker 1: see what she was looking at, you also looked. You
• 2:52:46
  Speaker 1: saw while you, I concurred, caught your death in the
• 2:52:53
  Speaker 1: night air. He literally bloomed so from this exploit that
• 2:52:58
  Speaker 1: he could afford radiantly to assays. And how otherwise should
• 2:53:02
  Speaker 1: I have been bad enough? He asked? Then, after another embrace,
• 2:53:10
  Speaker 1: the incident and our interview closed on my recognition of
• 2:53:16
  Speaker 1: all the reserves of goodness that for his joke he
• 2:53:22
  Speaker 1: had been able to draw. Upon end of chapter eleven,
• 2:53:27
  Speaker 1: Chapter twelve, the particular impression I had received proved in
• 2:53:32
  Speaker 1: the morning light, I repeat, not quite successfully presentable to
• 2:53:38
  Speaker 1: missus gross, though I reinforced it with the mention of
• 2:53:43
  Speaker 1: still another remark that he had made before we separated.
• 2:53:49
  Speaker 1: It all lies in half a dozen words, I said
• 2:53:52
  Speaker 1: to her, words that really settle the matter. Think you
• 2:53:57
  Speaker 1: know what I might do? He threw that off to
• 2:54:03
  Speaker 1: show me how good he is. He knows down to
• 2:54:07
  Speaker 1: the ground what he might do. That's what he gave
• 2:54:10
  Speaker 1: them a taste of at school. Lord, you do change,
• 2:54:14
  Speaker 1: cried my friend. I don't change. I simply make it out.
• 2:54:21
  Speaker 1: The four depend upon it perpetually meet. If on either
• 2:54:26
  Speaker 1: of these last nights you had been with either child,
• 2:54:30
  Speaker 1: you would clearly have understood. The more I've watched and waited,
• 2:54:36
  Speaker 1: the more I've felt that if there were nothing else
• 2:54:39
  Speaker 1: to make it sure, it would be made so by
• 2:54:43
  Speaker 1: the systematic silence of each Never by a slip of
• 2:54:47
  Speaker 1: the tongue have they so much as alluded to either
• 2:54:51
  Speaker 1: of their old friends, any more than Miles has alluded
• 2:54:56
  Speaker 1: to his expulsion. Oh yes, we may sit here and
• 2:55:01
  Speaker 1: look at them, and they may show off to us
• 2:55:04
  Speaker 1: to their fill. But even while they pretend to be
• 2:55:09
  Speaker 1: lost in their fairy tale they're steeped in their vision
• 2:55:13
  Speaker 1: of the dead restored. He's not reading to her, I declared,
• 2:55:19
  Speaker 1: they're talking of them, They're talking horrors. I go on,
• 2:55:24
  Speaker 1: I know as if I were crazy, and it's a
• 2:55:28
  Speaker 1: wonder I'm not. What I've seen would have made you so.
• 2:55:32
  Speaker 1: But it has only made me more lucid, made me
• 2:55:36
  Speaker 1: get hold of still other things. My lucidity must have
• 2:55:41
  Speaker 1: seemed awful, But the charming creatures who were victims of it,
• 2:55:46
  Speaker 1: passing and repassing in their interlocked sweetness, gave my colleague
• 2:55:51
  Speaker 1: something to hold on by, and I felt how tight
• 2:55:55
  Speaker 1: she held, as without stirring in the breath of my passion,
• 2:56:01
  Speaker 1: she covered them still with her eyes. Of what other
• 2:56:04
  Speaker 1: things have you got hold? Why? Of the very things
• 2:56:09
  Speaker 1: that have delighted, fascinated, and yet at bottom, as I
• 2:56:16
  Speaker 1: now so strangely see mystified and troubled me, they're more
• 2:56:22
  Speaker 1: than earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural goodness. It's a game,
• 2:56:30
  Speaker 1: I went on, It's a policy and a fraud on
• 2:56:36
  Speaker 1: the part of little darlings as yet mere lovely babies. Yes,
• 2:56:44
  Speaker 1: mad as that seems the very act of bringing it
• 2:56:48
  Speaker 1: out really helped me to trace it follow it all
• 2:56:52
  Speaker 1: up and piece it all together. They haven't been good,
• 2:56:57
  Speaker 1: They've only been absent. Tis been easy to live with
• 2:57:01
  Speaker 1: them because they're simply leading a life of their own.
• 2:57:05
  Speaker 1: They are not mine, they're not ours. They're his and
• 2:57:11
  Speaker 1: their hers quaints and that woman's quint's and that woman's.
• 2:57:20
  Speaker 1: They want to get them. Oh, how at this, poor
• 2:57:24
  Speaker 1: missus Grosse appeared to study them. But for what For
• 2:57:29
  Speaker 1: the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful
• 2:57:32
  Speaker 1: days the pair put into them, And to ply them
• 2:57:36
  Speaker 1: with that evil still to keep up the work of
• 2:57:39
  Speaker 1: demons is what brings the others back, laws, said my
• 2:57:46
  Speaker 1: friend under her breath. The exclamation was homely, but it
• 2:57:51
  Speaker 1: revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of what
• 2:57:55
  Speaker 1: in the bad time, For there had been a worse
• 2:57:59
  Speaker 1: even than this must have occurred. There could have been
• 2:58:03
  Speaker 1: no such justification for me as the plain ascent of
• 2:58:07
  Speaker 1: her experience, to whatever depth of depravity I found credible
• 2:58:12
  Speaker 1: in our brace of scoundrels, it was in obvious submission
• 2:58:17
  Speaker 1: of memory that she brought out after a moment they
• 2:58:22
  Speaker 1: were rascals. But what can they now do? She pursued, Do,
• 2:58:31
  Speaker 1: I echoed so loud that myles in flora. As they
• 2:58:34
  Speaker 1: passed at their distance, paused an instant in their walk
• 2:58:38
  Speaker 1: and looked at us. Don't they do enough, I demanded
• 2:58:42
  Speaker 1: in a lower tone, while the children, having smiled and
• 2:58:46
  Speaker 1: nodded and kissed hands to us, resumed their exhibition. We
• 2:58:51
  Speaker 1: were held by it a minute. Then I answered, they
• 2:58:55
  Speaker 1: can destroy them. At this my companion did turn, but
• 2:59:02
  Speaker 1: the inquiry she launched was a silent one, the effect
• 2:59:05
  Speaker 1: of which was to make me more explicit. They don't
• 2:59:09
  Speaker 1: know as yet quite how, but they're trying hard. They're
• 2:59:15
  Speaker 1: scene only a cross, as it were, and beyond in
• 2:59:20
  Speaker 1: strange places and on high places, the top of towers,
• 2:59:26
  Speaker 1: the roof of houses, the outside of windows, the further
• 2:59:31
  Speaker 1: edge of pools. But there's a deep design on either
• 2:59:36
  Speaker 1: side to shorten the distance and overcome the obstacle. And
• 2:59:41
  Speaker 1: the success of the tempters is only a question of time.
• 2:59:47
  Speaker 1: They've only to keep to their suggestions of danger for
• 2:59:52
  Speaker 1: the children to come and perish in the attempt. Missus
• 2:59:58
  Speaker 1: grow slowly got up, and I scrupulously added, unless, of course,
• 3:00:06
  Speaker 1: we can prevent standing there before me. While I kept
• 3:00:11
  Speaker 1: my seat, she visibly turned things over. Dear uncle must
• 3:00:17
  Speaker 1: do the preventing. He must take them away, and who's
• 3:00:22
  Speaker 1: to make him? She had been scanning the distance, But
• 3:00:27
  Speaker 1: she now dropped on me a foolish face, you miss
• 3:00:32
  Speaker 1: by writing to him that his house is poisoned and
• 3:00:36
  Speaker 1: his little nephew and niece mad. But if they are, miss,
• 3:00:42
  Speaker 1: and if I am myself, you mean that charming news
• 3:00:47
  Speaker 1: to be sent him by a governess whose prime undertaking
• 3:00:50
  Speaker 1: was to give him no worry. Missus gross considered following
• 3:00:56
  Speaker 1: the children again. Yes, ye do hate worry. That was
• 3:01:02
  Speaker 1: the great reason why those friends took him in so long,
• 3:01:07
  Speaker 1: No doubt though his indifference must have been awful, As
• 3:01:12
  Speaker 1: I'm not a fiend at any rate, I shouldn't take
• 3:01:15
  Speaker 1: him in my companion. After an instant and for all answer,
• 3:01:22
  Speaker 1: sat down again and grasped my arm. Make him, at
• 3:01:26
  Speaker 1: any rate come to you, I stared to me. I
• 3:01:33
  Speaker 1: had a sudden fear of what she might do him.
• 3:01:38
  Speaker 1: He ought to be here, he ought to help. I
• 3:01:42
  Speaker 1: quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her
• 3:01:45
  Speaker 1: a queerer face than ever. Yet you see me asking
• 3:01:49
  Speaker 1: him for a visit. No, with her eyes on my face,
• 3:01:54
  Speaker 1: she evidently couldn't instead of it, even as a woman
• 3:01:59
  Speaker 1: reads another. She could see what I myself saw, his derision,
• 3:02:04
  Speaker 1: his amusement, his contempt, for the break down of my
• 3:02:09
  Speaker 1: resignation at being left alone, and for the fine machinery
• 3:02:13
  Speaker 1: I had set in motion to attract his attention to
• 3:02:16
  Speaker 1: my slighted charms. She didn't know, No one knew how
• 3:02:23
  Speaker 1: proud I had been to serve him and to stick
• 3:02:26
  Speaker 1: to our terms. Yet she none the less took the measure.
• 3:02:31
  Speaker 1: I think of the warning I now gave her, if
• 3:02:36
  Speaker 1: you should so lose your head as to appeal to
• 3:02:39
  Speaker 1: him for me, She was really frightened. Yes, miss I
• 3:02:47
  Speaker 1: would leave on the spot, both him and you. And
• 3:02:55
  Speaker 1: of chapter twelve, Chapter thirteen. It was all very well
• 3:03:01
  Speaker 1: to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as
• 3:03:06
  Speaker 1: much as ever an effort beyond my strength, offered in
• 3:03:11
  Speaker 1: close quarters difficulties as insurmountable as before. This situation continued
• 3:03:19
  Speaker 1: a month, and with new aggravations and particular notes. The
• 3:03:25
  Speaker 1: note above all sharper and sharper of the small ironic
• 3:03:32
  Speaker 1: consciousness on the part of my pupils. It was not
• 3:03:37
  Speaker 1: I am as sure to day as I was sure
• 3:03:40
  Speaker 1: then my mere infernal imagination. It was absolutely traceable, that
• 3:03:47
  Speaker 1: they were aware of my predicament, and that this strange
• 3:03:51
  Speaker 1: relation made in a manner for a long time the
• 3:03:56
  Speaker 1: air in which we moved. I don't mean that they
• 3:03:59
  Speaker 1: had their their tongues in their cheeks or did anything vulgar,
• 3:04:03
  Speaker 1: for that was not one of their dangers. I do mean,
• 3:04:07
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, that the element of the unnamed
• 3:04:12
  Speaker 1: and untouched became between us greater than any other, and
• 3:04:18
  Speaker 1: that so much avoidance could not have been so successfully
• 3:04:22
  Speaker 1: affected without a great deal of tacit arrangement. It was
• 3:04:27
  Speaker 1: as if at moments we were perpetually coming into sight
• 3:04:32
  Speaker 1: of subjects before which we must stop short, turning suddenly
• 3:04:37
  Speaker 1: out of alleys that we perceived to be blind, closing
• 3:04:41
  Speaker 1: with a little bang that made us look at each other.
• 3:04:45
  Speaker 1: For like all bangs, it was something louder than we
• 3:04:50
  Speaker 1: had intended. The doors we had indiscreetly opened. All roads
• 3:04:57
  Speaker 1: lead to Rome. And there were times when it might
• 3:05:00
  Speaker 1: have struck us that almost every branch of study or
• 3:05:04
  Speaker 1: subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground. Forbidden ground was the
• 3:05:10
  Speaker 1: question of the return of the dead in general, and
• 3:05:14
  Speaker 1: of whatever in especial might survive in memory of the
• 3:05:20
  Speaker 1: friends little children had lost. There were days when I
• 3:05:24
  Speaker 1: could have sworn that one of them had, with a
• 3:05:26
  Speaker 1: small invisible nudge, said to the other, she thinks she'll
• 3:05:31
  Speaker 1: do it this time, but she won't two do it
• 3:05:38
  Speaker 1: would have been to indulge, for instance, and for once
• 3:05:42
  Speaker 1: in a way, in some direct reference to the lady
• 3:05:45
  Speaker 1: who had prepared them for my discipline. They had a delightful,
• 3:05:49
  Speaker 1: endless appetite for passages in my own history to which
• 3:05:54
  Speaker 1: I had again and again treated them. They were in
• 3:05:57
  Speaker 1: possession of everything that had ever happened to me, had
• 3:06:01
  Speaker 1: had with every circumstance, the story of my smallest adventures,
• 3:06:07
  Speaker 1: and of those of my brothers and sisters, and of
• 3:06:10
  Speaker 1: the cat and the dog at home, as well as
• 3:06:14
  Speaker 1: many particulars of the eccentric nature of my father, of
• 3:06:18
  Speaker 1: the furniture and arrangement of our house, and of the
• 3:06:22
  Speaker 1: conversation of the old women of our village. There were
• 3:06:27
  Speaker 1: things enough taking one with another to chatter about. If
• 3:06:33
  Speaker 1: one went very fast and knew by instinct when to
• 3:06:36
  Speaker 1: go round, they purled with an art of their own.
• 3:06:40
  Speaker 1: The strings of my invention and my memory had nothing else. Perhaps,
• 3:06:47
  Speaker 1: when I thought of such occasions afterward, gave me so
• 3:06:50
  Speaker 1: the suspicion of being watched from under cover. It was
• 3:06:55
  Speaker 1: in any case, over my life, my past, and my
• 3:07:00
  Speaker 1: friends alone, that we could take anything like our ease,
• 3:07:05
  Speaker 1: a state of affairs that led them, sometimes without the
• 3:07:10
  Speaker 1: least pertinence, to break out into sociable reminders. I was invited,
• 3:07:17
  Speaker 1: with no visible connection, to repeat afresh Goody Ghostling celebrated
• 3:07:23
  Speaker 1: mow or to confirm the details already supplied as to
• 3:07:29
  Speaker 1: the cleverness of the vicarage pony. It was partly at
• 3:07:33
  Speaker 1: such junctures as these, and partly at quite different ones, that,
• 3:07:38
  Speaker 1: with the turn my matters had now taken, my predicament,
• 3:07:43
  Speaker 1: as I have called it, grew most sensible. The fact
• 3:07:48
  Speaker 1: that these days passed for me without another encounter ought
• 3:07:52
  Speaker 1: it would have appeared to have done something towards soothing
• 3:07:56
  Speaker 1: my nerves. Since the light brush that second night on
• 3:08:00
  Speaker 1: the upper landing of the presence of a woman at
• 3:08:03
  Speaker 1: the foot of the stair, I had seen nothing, whether
• 3:08:08
  Speaker 1: in or out of the house, that one had better
• 3:08:12
  Speaker 1: not have seen. There was many a corner round which
• 3:08:15
  Speaker 1: I expected to come upon quint, and many a situation that,
• 3:08:21
  Speaker 1: in a merely sinister way, would have favored the appearance
• 3:08:25
  Speaker 1: of miss Dressel. The summer had turned, the summer had gone,
• 3:08:32
  Speaker 1: the autumn had dropped upon lie and had blown out
• 3:08:35
  Speaker 1: half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and
• 3:08:40
  Speaker 1: withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was
• 3:08:46
  Speaker 1: like a theater after the performance, all strewn with crumpled playbills.
• 3:08:52
  Speaker 1: There were exactly states of the air, conditions of sound
• 3:08:56
  Speaker 1: and of stillness, unspeakable impressions of the kind of ministering
• 3:09:02
  Speaker 1: moment that brought back to me long enough to catch it,
• 3:09:08
  Speaker 1: the feeling of the medium in which that June evening,
• 3:09:11
  Speaker 1: out of doors I had had my first sight of Quint,
• 3:09:16
  Speaker 1: and in which, too, at those other instants I had,
• 3:09:21
  Speaker 1: after seeing him through the window, looked for him in
• 3:09:24
  Speaker 1: vain in the circle of shrubbery. I recognized the signs,
• 3:09:31
  Speaker 1: the portense, I recognized the moment, the spot, but they
• 3:09:36
  Speaker 1: remained unaccompanied and empty, and I continued unmolested. If unmolested
• 3:09:44
  Speaker 1: one could call a young woman whose sensibility had, in
• 3:09:48
  Speaker 1: the most extraordinary fashion, not declined but deepened, I had
• 3:09:55
  Speaker 1: said in my talk with missus Grosse on that horrid
• 3:09:57
  Speaker 1: scene of Flora's by the lake, and had perplexed her
• 3:10:01
  Speaker 1: by so saying that it would from that moment distress
• 3:10:06
  Speaker 1: me much more to lose my power than to keep it.
• 3:10:10
  Speaker 1: I had then expressed what was vividly in my mind
• 3:10:14
  Speaker 1: the truth that whether the children really saw or not,
• 3:10:18
  Speaker 1: since that is it was not yet definitely proved, I
• 3:10:24
  Speaker 1: greatly preferred as a safeguard the fullness of my own exposure.
• 3:10:29
  Speaker 1: I was ready to know the very worst that was
• 3:10:32
  Speaker 1: to be known. What I had then had an ugly
• 3:10:35
  Speaker 1: glimpse of was that my eyes might be sealed, just
• 3:10:39
  Speaker 1: while theirs were most opened. Well, my eyes were sealed.
• 3:10:45
  Speaker 1: It appeared at present a consummation for which it seemed
• 3:10:49
  Speaker 1: blasphemous not to thank God. There was alas a difficulty
• 3:10:55
  Speaker 1: about that. I would have thanked him with all my
• 3:10:59
  Speaker 1: soul had I not had in a proportionate measure this
• 3:11:04
  Speaker 1: conviction of the secret of my pupils, How can I
• 3:11:09
  Speaker 1: retrace to day the strange steps of my obsession. There
• 3:11:13
  Speaker 1: were times of our being together when I would have
• 3:11:16
  Speaker 1: been ready to swear that literally in my presence, but
• 3:11:20
  Speaker 1: with my direct sense of it closed. They had visitors
• 3:11:24
  Speaker 1: who were known and were welcome. Then it was that
• 3:11:29
  Speaker 1: had I not been deterred by the very chance that
• 3:11:32
  Speaker 1: such an injury might prove greater than the injury to
• 3:11:35
  Speaker 1: be averted, my exultation would have broken out the here there,
• 3:11:43
  Speaker 1: hear you little wretches, I would have cried. And you
• 3:11:46
  Speaker 1: can't deny it now. The little wretches denied it with
• 3:11:50
  Speaker 1: all the added volume of their sociability and their tenderness,
• 3:11:54
  Speaker 1: in just the crystal depths of which, like the flash
• 3:11:58
  Speaker 1: of a fish in a stream, the mockery of their
• 3:12:01
  Speaker 1: advantage peeped up. The shock in truth had sunk into
• 3:12:06
  Speaker 1: me still deeper than I knew. On the night, when
• 3:12:10
  Speaker 1: looking out to see either Quint or Miss Jessel under
• 3:12:12
  Speaker 1: the stars, I had beheld the boy over whose rest
• 3:12:17
  Speaker 1: I watched, and who had immediately brought in with him,
• 3:12:21
  Speaker 1: had straightway there turned it on me, the lovely upward
• 3:12:26
  Speaker 1: look with which from the battlements above me the hideous
• 3:12:31
  Speaker 1: apparition of Quint had played. If it was a question
• 3:12:35
  Speaker 1: of a scare, my discovery on this occasion had scared
• 3:12:40
  Speaker 1: me more than any other, and it was in the
• 3:12:45
  Speaker 1: condition of nerves produced by it that I made my
• 3:12:49
  Speaker 1: actual inductions. They harassed me so that sometimes at odd moments,
• 3:12:56
  Speaker 1: I shut myself up audibly to rehearse. It was at
• 3:13:01
  Speaker 1: once a fantastic relief and of renewed despair the manner
• 3:13:07
  Speaker 1: in which I might come to the point. I approached
• 3:13:10
  Speaker 1: it from one side and the other. While in my room,
• 3:13:15
  Speaker 1: I flung myself about, but I always broke down in
• 3:13:19
  Speaker 1: the monstrous utterance of names. As they died away on
• 3:13:23
  Speaker 1: my lips, I said to myself that I should indeed
• 3:13:28
  Speaker 1: help them to represent something infamous, if by pronouncing them
• 3:13:33
  Speaker 1: I should violate as rare a little case of instinctive
• 3:13:37
  Speaker 1: delicacy as any schoolroom probably had ever known. When I
• 3:13:44
  Speaker 1: said to myself, they have the manners to be silent,
• 3:13:48
  Speaker 1: and you, trusted as you are the baseness to speak,
• 3:13:54
  Speaker 1: I felt myself crimson, and I covered my face with
• 3:13:58
  Speaker 1: my hands. After these secret scenes, I chattered more than ever,
• 3:14:03
  Speaker 1: going on volubly enough till one of our prodigious palpable
• 3:14:08
  Speaker 1: hushes occurred. I can call them nothing else, the strange
• 3:14:14
  Speaker 1: dizzy lift or swim I trifer terms into a stillness,
• 3:14:21
  Speaker 1: a pause of all life that had nothing to do
• 3:14:25
  Speaker 1: with the more or less noise that at the moment
• 3:14:29
  Speaker 1: we might be engaged in making, and that I could
• 3:14:32
  Speaker 1: hear through any deepened exhilaration or quickened recitation or louder
• 3:14:37
  Speaker 1: strum of the piano, than it was that the others,
• 3:14:42
  Speaker 1: the outsiders, were there. Though they were not angels, they passed,
• 3:14:49
  Speaker 1: as the French say, causing me while they stayed to
• 3:14:54
  Speaker 1: tremble with the fear of their addressing to their younger
• 3:14:57
  Speaker 1: victims some yet more infernal message or more vivid image
• 3:15:03
  Speaker 1: than they had thought good enough for myself. What it
• 3:15:06
  Speaker 1: was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel
• 3:15:09
  Speaker 1: idea that whatever I had seen Miles and Floora saw
• 3:15:15
  Speaker 1: more things terrible and unguessable, and that sprang from dreadful
• 3:15:21
  Speaker 1: passages of intercourse in the past, such things naturally left
• 3:15:26
  Speaker 1: on the surface for the time a chill which we
• 3:15:29
  Speaker 1: voice fuously denied that we felt, and we had all
• 3:15:34
  Speaker 1: three with repetition, got into such splendid training that we
• 3:15:39
  Speaker 1: went each time almost automatically to mark the close of
• 3:15:45
  Speaker 1: the incident through the very same movements. It was striking
• 3:15:52
  Speaker 1: of the children at all events to kiss me inveterately
• 3:15:57
  Speaker 1: with a kind of wild irrelevance, and never to fail
• 3:16:01
  Speaker 1: one or the other of the precious question that had
• 3:16:05
  Speaker 1: helped us through many a peril. When do you think
• 3:16:08
  Speaker 1: he will come? Don't you think we ought to write?
• 3:16:15
  Speaker 1: There was nothing like that inquiry we found by experience
• 3:16:20
  Speaker 1: for carrying off an awkwardness. He of course was their
• 3:16:26
  Speaker 1: uncle in Harley Street, and we lived in much profusion
• 3:16:30
  Speaker 1: of theory that he might at any moment arrive to
• 3:16:34
  Speaker 1: mingle in our circle. It was impossible to have given
• 3:16:39
  Speaker 1: less encouragement than he had done to such a doctrine.
• 3:16:43
  Speaker 1: But if we had not had the doctrine to fall
• 3:16:45
  Speaker 1: back upon, we should have deprived each other of some
• 3:16:48
  Speaker 1: of our finest exhibitions. He never wrote to them. That
• 3:16:54
  Speaker 1: may have been selfish, but it was a part of
• 3:16:58
  Speaker 1: the flattery of his trust of me. For the way
• 3:17:01
  Speaker 1: in which a man pays his highest tribute to a
• 3:17:03
  Speaker 1: woman is apt to be but by the more festal
• 3:17:07
  Speaker 1: celebration of one of the sacred laws of his comfort.
• 3:17:12
  Speaker 1: And I held that I carried out the spirit of
• 3:17:14
  Speaker 1: the pledge given not to appeal to him. When I
• 3:17:18
  Speaker 1: let my charges understand that their own letters were but
• 3:17:22
  Speaker 1: charming literary exercises, they were too beautiful to be posted,
• 3:17:28
  Speaker 1: I kept them myself. I have them all to this hour.
• 3:17:34
  Speaker 1: This was a rule, indeed, which only added to the
• 3:17:36
  Speaker 1: satiric effect of my being plied with the supposition that
• 3:17:39
  Speaker 1: he might, at any moment be among us. It was
• 3:17:43
  Speaker 1: exactly as if my charges knew, how almost more awkward
• 3:17:48
  Speaker 1: than anything else that might be for me. There appears
• 3:17:52
  Speaker 1: to me moreover, as I look back, no note, and
• 3:17:57
  Speaker 1: all this more extraordinary than the mere fact that, in
• 3:18:02
  Speaker 1: spite of my tension and of their triumph, I never
• 3:18:06
  Speaker 1: lost patience with them. Adorable they must, in truth have been.
• 3:18:12
  Speaker 1: I now reflect that I didn't in these days hate
• 3:18:15
  Speaker 1: them for it exasperation. However, if relief had longer been
• 3:18:20
  Speaker 1: postponed finally have betrayed me, it little matters. For relief arrived.
• 3:18:29
  Speaker 1: I call it relief, though it was only the relief
• 3:18:32
  Speaker 1: that a snap brings to a strain, or the burst
• 3:18:36
  Speaker 1: of a thunder storm to a day of suffocation. It
• 3:18:41
  Speaker 1: was at least change, and it came with a rush.
• 3:18:48
  Speaker 1: And of Chapter thirteen, Chapter fourteen. Walking to church a
• 3:18:55
  Speaker 1: certain Sunday morning, I had Little Miles at my side,
• 3:18:59
  Speaker 1: and his sister in advance of us, and at Missus
• 3:19:03
  Speaker 1: Grose's well in sight. It was a crisp, clear day,
• 3:19:11
  Speaker 1: the first of its order for some time. The night
• 3:19:14
  Speaker 1: had brought a touch of frost, and the autumn air,
• 3:19:18
  Speaker 1: bright and sharp, made the church bells almost gay. It
• 3:19:24
  Speaker 1: was an odd accident of thought that I should have
• 3:19:26
  Speaker 1: happened at such a moment to be particularly and very
• 3:19:31
  Speaker 1: gratefully struck with the obedience of my little charges. Why
• 3:19:35
  Speaker 1: did they never resent my inexorable, my perpetual society. Something
• 3:19:43
  Speaker 1: or other had brought nearer home to me that I
• 3:19:46
  Speaker 1: had all but pinned the boy to my shawl, and
• 3:19:49
  Speaker 1: that in the way our companions were martial before me,
• 3:19:53
  Speaker 1: I might have appeared to provide against some danger of rebellion.
• 3:19:59
  Speaker 1: I was like a jail baler, with an eye to
• 3:20:01
  Speaker 1: possible surprises and escapes. But all this belonged, I mean,
• 3:20:08
  Speaker 1: their magnificent little surrender, just to the special array of
• 3:20:14
  Speaker 1: the facts that were most abysmal turned out for Sunday
• 3:20:19
  Speaker 1: by his uncle's tailor, who had had a free hand
• 3:20:23
  Speaker 1: and a notion of pretty waistcoats and of his grand
• 3:20:27
  Speaker 1: little air. Myles's whole title to independence, the rights of
• 3:20:32
  Speaker 1: his sex and situation were so stamped upon him that
• 3:20:37
  Speaker 1: if he had suddenly struck for freedom. I should have
• 3:20:40
  Speaker 1: had nothing to say. I was, by the strangest of chances,
• 3:20:46
  Speaker 1: wondering how I should meet him. When the revolution unmistakably occurred.
• 3:20:52
  Speaker 1: I call it a revolution because I now see how
• 3:20:56
  Speaker 1: with the word he spoke, the curtain rose on the
• 3:21:00
  Speaker 1: last act of my dreadful drama, and the catastrophe was precipitated.
• 3:21:07
  Speaker 1: Look here, my dear, you know, he charmingly said, when
• 3:21:12
  Speaker 1: in the world, please, am I going back to school?
• 3:21:16
  Speaker 1: Transcribed here, the speech sounds harmless enough, particularly as uttered
• 3:21:22
  Speaker 1: in the sweet, high casual pipe, with which at all interlocutors,
• 3:21:28
  Speaker 1: but above all at his eternal governess, he threw off
• 3:21:33
  Speaker 1: intonations as if he were tossing roses. There was something
• 3:21:38
  Speaker 1: in them that always made one catch. And I caught,
• 3:21:42
  Speaker 1: at any rate, now so effectually that I stopped, as
• 3:21:48
  Speaker 1: short as if one of the trees of the park
• 3:21:50
  Speaker 1: had fallen across the road. There was something new on
• 3:21:55
  Speaker 1: the spot between us, and he was perfectly aware that
• 3:21:59
  Speaker 1: I reckonized it. Though to enable me to do so,
• 3:22:04
  Speaker 1: he had no need to look at a whit less
• 3:22:06
  Speaker 1: candid and charming than usual. I could feel in him,
• 3:22:10
  Speaker 1: how he already from my at first, finding nothing to reply,
• 3:22:15
  Speaker 1: perceived the advantage he had gained. I was so slow
• 3:22:20
  Speaker 1: to find anything that he had plenty of time after
• 3:22:24
  Speaker 1: a minute to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive smile.
• 3:22:29
  Speaker 1: You know, my dear, that for a fellow to be
• 3:22:32
  Speaker 1: with a lady always his my dear was constantly on
• 3:22:38
  Speaker 1: his lips for me. And nothing could have expressed more
• 3:22:41
  Speaker 1: the exact shade of the sentiment with which I desired
• 3:22:45
  Speaker 1: to inspire my pupils than its fond familiarity. It was
• 3:22:50
  Speaker 1: so respectfully easy. But oh how I felt that at
• 3:22:54
  Speaker 1: present I must pick my own phrases. I remember that
• 3:23:00
  Speaker 1: to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed
• 3:23:04
  Speaker 1: to see in the beautiful face with which he watched
• 3:23:07
  Speaker 1: me how ugly and queer I looked, And always with
• 3:23:12
  Speaker 1: the same lady I returned. He neither blanched nor winked.
• 3:23:18
  Speaker 1: The whole thing was virtually out between us. Ah, of course,
• 3:23:23
  Speaker 1: she's a jolly perfect lady. But after all, I'm a fellow.
• 3:23:31
  Speaker 1: Don't you see? That's well getting on? I lingered there
• 3:23:37
  Speaker 1: with him an instant, ever so kindly, Yes, you're getting on. Oh,
• 3:23:45
  Speaker 1: but I felt helpless. I have kept to this day,
• 3:23:50
  Speaker 1: the heart breaking little idea of how he seemed to
• 3:23:54
  Speaker 1: know that and to play with it. And you can't
• 3:23:58
  Speaker 1: say I've not been awfully good, can you? I laid
• 3:24:02
  Speaker 1: my hand on his shoulder, For though I felt how
• 3:24:05
  Speaker 1: much better it would have been to walk on, I
• 3:24:08
  Speaker 1: was not yet quite able. No, I can't say that, myles,
• 3:24:16
  Speaker 1: except just that one night, you know that one night
• 3:24:23
  Speaker 1: I couldn't look as straight as he. Why when I
• 3:24:26
  Speaker 1: went down, went out of the house. Oh yes, but
• 3:24:32
  Speaker 1: I forget what you did it for? You forget, he spoke,
• 3:24:37
  Speaker 1: with the sweet extravagance of childish reproach. Why it was
• 3:24:44
  Speaker 1: to show you I could, Oh, yes, you could, and
• 3:24:49
  Speaker 1: I can. Again. I felt that I might, perhaps after all,
• 3:24:56
  Speaker 1: succeed in keeping my wits about me, certainly, but you won't. No,
• 3:25:05
  Speaker 1: not that again. It was nothing. It was nothing, I said,
• 3:25:12
  Speaker 1: But we must go on. He resumed our walk with me,
• 3:25:17
  Speaker 1: passing his hand into my arm. Then when am I
• 3:25:21
  Speaker 1: going back? I wore in turning it over my most
• 3:25:26
  Speaker 1: responsible air. Were you very happy at school? He just considered, Oh,
• 3:25:36
  Speaker 1: I'm happy enough anywhere. Well, then I quavered, if you're
• 3:25:43
  Speaker 1: just as happy here? Ah, but that isn't everything. Of course,
• 3:25:50
  Speaker 1: you know a lot, but you hint that you know
• 3:25:55
  Speaker 1: almost as much. I risked, as he paused, not half.
• 3:26:02
  Speaker 1: I want to, Myles, honestly professed, But it isn't so
• 3:26:08
  Speaker 1: much that. What is it? Then? Well? I want to
• 3:26:14
  Speaker 1: see more life. I see, I see. We had arrived
• 3:26:21
  Speaker 1: within sight of the church, and of various persons, including
• 3:26:26
  Speaker 1: several of the household of Bly, on their way to it,
• 3:26:29
  Speaker 1: and clustered about the door to see us go in.
• 3:26:33
  Speaker 1: I quickened our step. I wanted to get there before
• 3:26:36
  Speaker 1: the question between us opened up much further. I reflected
• 3:26:40
  Speaker 1: hungrily that for more than an hour he would have
• 3:26:44
  Speaker 1: to be silent, and I thought with envy of the
• 3:26:47
  Speaker 1: comparative dusk of the pew, and of the almost spiritual
• 3:26:52
  Speaker 1: help of the hassock on which I might bend my knees.
• 3:26:56
  Speaker 1: I seemed literally to be running a race with some confusion,
• 3:27:01
  Speaker 1: to which he was about to reduce me. But I
• 3:27:04
  Speaker 1: felt that he had got in first. When before we
• 3:27:07
  Speaker 1: had even entered the churchyard he threw out I want
• 3:27:10
  Speaker 1: my own sort. It literally made me bound forward. There
• 3:27:17
  Speaker 1: are not many of your own sort, miles, I love,
• 3:27:20
  Speaker 1: unless perhaps dear little Flora, you really compare me to
• 3:27:25
  Speaker 1: a baby girl. This found me singularly weak. Don't you
• 3:27:34
  Speaker 1: then love our sweet Flora if I didn't, and you
• 3:27:40
  Speaker 1: too if I didn't, He repeated, as if retreating for
• 3:27:45
  Speaker 1: a jump, yet leaving his thoughts so unfinished that after
• 3:27:50
  Speaker 1: we had come into the gate, another stop, which he
• 3:27:53
  Speaker 1: imposed on me by the pressure of his arm, had
• 3:27:57
  Speaker 1: become inevitable. Missus Gray and Flora had passed into the church.
• 3:28:02
  Speaker 1: The other worshippers had followed, and we were for the
• 3:28:05
  Speaker 1: minute alone among the old, thick graves. We had paused
• 3:28:11
  Speaker 1: on the path from the gate by a low oblong
• 3:28:15
  Speaker 1: table like tomb. Yes, if you didn't, he looked, while
• 3:28:22
  Speaker 1: I waited at the graves, Well you know what? But
• 3:28:30
  Speaker 1: he didn't move, and he presently produced something that made
• 3:28:34
  Speaker 1: me drop straight down on the stone's lab as if
• 3:28:37
  Speaker 1: suddenly to rest. Does my uncle think what you think?
• 3:28:42
  Speaker 1: I markedly rested. How do you know what I think? Ah? Well,
• 3:28:49
  Speaker 1: of course I don't, for it strikes me. You never
• 3:28:53
  Speaker 1: tell me. But I mean, does he know know what?
• 3:28:59
  Speaker 1: Myle Why the way I'm going on? I perceived quickly
• 3:29:06
  Speaker 1: enough that I could make to this inquiry no answer
• 3:29:09
  Speaker 1: that would not involve something of a sacrifice of my employer.
• 3:29:13
  Speaker 1: He had. It appeared to me that we were all
• 3:29:15
  Speaker 1: at bly sufficiently sacrificed to make that venial. I don't
• 3:29:20
  Speaker 1: think your uncle much cares. Myles on this stood looking
• 3:29:26
  Speaker 1: at me. Then don't you think he can be made
• 3:29:30
  Speaker 1: to in what way? Why? By his coming down? But
• 3:29:38
  Speaker 1: who'll get him to come down? I will, the boy said,
• 3:29:44
  Speaker 1: with extraordinary brightness and emphasis. He gave me another look,
• 3:29:50
  Speaker 1: charged with that expression, and then marched off alone into church.
• 3:29:58
  Speaker 1: End of Chapter fourt Chapter fifteen. The business was practically
• 3:30:05
  Speaker 1: settled from the moment. I never followed him. It was
• 3:30:09
  Speaker 1: a pitiful surrender to agitation, But my being aware of this,
• 3:30:13
  Speaker 1: had somehow no power to restore me. I only sat
• 3:30:18
  Speaker 1: there on my tomb and read into what my little
• 3:30:21
  Speaker 1: friend had said to me, the fullness of its meaning.
• 3:30:26
  Speaker 1: By the time I had grasped the whole of which
• 3:30:29
  Speaker 1: I had also embraced for absence the pretext that I
• 3:30:34
  Speaker 1: was ashamed to offer my pupils and the rest of
• 3:30:37
  Speaker 1: the congregation such an example of delay. What I said
• 3:30:43
  Speaker 1: to myself above all was that Myles had got something
• 3:30:47
  Speaker 1: out of me, and that the proof of it for
• 3:30:51
  Speaker 1: him would be just this awkward collapse he had got
• 3:30:56
  Speaker 1: out of me, that there was something I was much
• 3:30:59
  Speaker 1: afraid of, and that he should probably be able to
• 3:31:03
  Speaker 1: make use of my fear to gain for his own
• 3:31:06
  Speaker 1: purpose more freedom. My fear was of having to deal
• 3:31:12
  Speaker 1: with the intolerable question of the grounds of his dismissal
• 3:31:16
  Speaker 1: from school, for that was really but the question of
• 3:31:20
  Speaker 1: the horrors gathered behind. That his uncle should arrive to
• 3:31:24
  Speaker 1: treat with me. Of these things was a solution that
• 3:31:28
  Speaker 1: strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired to bring on.
• 3:31:34
  Speaker 1: But I could so little face the ugliness and the
• 3:31:37
  Speaker 1: pain of it that I simply procrastinated and lived from
• 3:31:42
  Speaker 1: hand to mouth. The boy, to my deep discomposure, was
• 3:31:48
  Speaker 1: immensely in the right, was in a position to say
• 3:31:52
  Speaker 1: to me, either you clear up with my guardian the
• 3:31:57
  Speaker 1: mystery of this interruption of my studies, or you ceased
• 3:32:02
  Speaker 1: to expect me to lead with you a life that
• 3:32:05
  Speaker 1: so unnatural for a boy. What was so unnatural for
• 3:32:11
  Speaker 1: the particular boy I was concerned with was this sudden
• 3:32:15
  Speaker 1: revelation of a consciousness and a plan. That was what
• 3:32:21
  Speaker 1: really overcame me, what prevented my going in, I walked
• 3:32:27
  Speaker 1: round the church hesitating, hovering. I reflected that I had
• 3:32:33
  Speaker 1: already with him hurt myself beyond repair. Therefore I could
• 3:32:39
  Speaker 1: patch up nothing, and it was too extreme an effort
• 3:32:42
  Speaker 1: to squeeze beside him into the pew. He would be
• 3:32:46
  Speaker 1: so much more sure than ever to pass his arm
• 3:32:49
  Speaker 1: into mine and make me sit there for an hour
• 3:32:52
  Speaker 1: in close silent contact with his commentary on our talk.
• 3:32:59
  Speaker 1: For the first minute since his arrival, I wanted to
• 3:33:02
  Speaker 1: get away from him. As I paused beneath the high
• 3:33:06
  Speaker 1: east window and listened to the sounds of worship, I
• 3:33:11
  Speaker 1: was taken with an impulse that might master me. I
• 3:33:13
  Speaker 1: felt completely. Should I give it the least encouragement, I
• 3:33:19
  Speaker 1: might easily put an end to my predicament by getting
• 3:33:23
  Speaker 1: away altogether. Here was my chance. There was no one
• 3:33:27
  Speaker 1: to stop me. I could give the whole thing up,
• 3:33:30
  Speaker 1: turn my back and retreat. It was only a question
• 3:33:34
  Speaker 1: of hurrying again for a few preparations to the house,
• 3:33:38
  Speaker 1: which the attendants at church of so many of the
• 3:33:42
  Speaker 1: servants would practically have left unoccupied. No one, in short,
• 3:33:48
  Speaker 1: could blame me if I should just drive desperately off.
• 3:33:52
  Speaker 1: Why was it to get away. If I got away
• 3:33:55
  Speaker 1: only till dinner, that would be in a couple of hours,
• 3:34:00
  Speaker 1: at the end of which I had the acute provision.
• 3:34:04
  Speaker 1: My little pupils would play at innocent wonder about my
• 3:34:08
  Speaker 1: non appearance in their train. What did you do? You
• 3:34:15
  Speaker 1: not a bad thing? Why in the world to worry
• 3:34:19
  Speaker 1: us so and take our thoughts off too? Don't you know?
• 3:34:25
  Speaker 1: Did you desert us at the very door? I couldn't
• 3:34:29
  Speaker 1: meet such questions, nor as they asked them their false
• 3:34:34
  Speaker 1: little lovely eyes. Yes, it was all so exactly what
• 3:34:39
  Speaker 1: I should have to meet that as the prospect grew
• 3:34:43
  Speaker 1: sharp to me, I at last let myself go. I
• 3:34:48
  Speaker 1: got so far as the immediate moment was concerned away.
• 3:34:54
  Speaker 1: I came straight out of the churchyard, and, thinking hard,
• 3:34:59
  Speaker 1: retraced my steps through the park. It seemed to me
• 3:35:03
  Speaker 1: that by the time I reached the house I had
• 3:35:05
  Speaker 1: made up my mind I would fly. The sunday stillness,
• 3:35:11
  Speaker 1: both of the approaches and of the interior in which
• 3:35:15
  Speaker 1: I met no one fairly excited me with a sense
• 3:35:19
  Speaker 1: of opportunity. Were I to get off quickly this way,
• 3:35:25
  Speaker 1: I should get off without a scene, without a word.
• 3:35:29
  Speaker 1: My quickness would have to be remarkable, however, and the
• 3:35:33
  Speaker 1: question of a conveyance was the great one to settle.
• 3:35:38
  Speaker 1: Tormented in the hall with difficulties and obstacles, I remember
• 3:35:44
  Speaker 1: sinking down at the foot of the staircase, suddenly collapsing
• 3:35:49
  Speaker 1: there on the lowest step, and then with a revulsion,
• 3:35:54
  Speaker 1: recalling that it was exactly where, more than a month before,
• 3:35:58
  Speaker 1: in the darkness of night, and just so bowed with
• 3:36:02
  Speaker 1: evil things, I had seen the specter of the most
• 3:36:07
  Speaker 1: horrible of women. At this I was able to straighten myself.
• 3:36:13
  Speaker 1: I went the rest of the way up. I made
• 3:36:16
  Speaker 1: in my bewilderment for the schoolroom, where there were objects
• 3:36:20
  Speaker 1: belonging to me that I should have to take. But
• 3:36:23
  Speaker 1: I opened the door to find again in a flash,
• 3:36:27
  Speaker 1: my eyes unsealed in the presence of what I saw,
• 3:36:33
  Speaker 1: I reeled straight back upon my resistance. Seated at my
• 3:36:37
  Speaker 1: own table in clear noonday light, I saw a person whom,
• 3:36:44
  Speaker 1: without my previous experience, I should have taken at the
• 3:36:48
  Speaker 1: first blush, for some housemaid who might have stayed at
• 3:36:52
  Speaker 1: home to look after the place, and who, availing herself
• 3:36:56
  Speaker 1: of rare relief from observation, and of the schoolroom table,
• 3:37:00
  Speaker 1: and my pens, ink and paper had applied herself to
• 3:37:05
  Speaker 1: the considerable effort of a letter to her sweetheart. There
• 3:37:10
  Speaker 1: was an effort in the way that, while her arms
• 3:37:13
  Speaker 1: rested on the table, her hands, with evident weariness, supported
• 3:37:19
  Speaker 1: her head. But at the moment I took this in,
• 3:37:23
  Speaker 1: I had already become aware that, in spite of my entrance,
• 3:37:28
  Speaker 1: her attitude strangely persisted. Then it was with the very
• 3:37:34
  Speaker 1: act of its announcing itself that her identity flared up
• 3:37:38
  Speaker 1: in a change of posture. She rose, not as if
• 3:37:43
  Speaker 1: she had heard me, but with an indescribable grand melancholy
• 3:37:48
  Speaker 1: of indifference and detachment, and within a dozen feet of me,
• 3:37:55
  Speaker 1: stood there as my vile predecessor, dis honor and tragic
• 3:38:01
  Speaker 1: she was all before me. But even as I fixed
• 3:38:05
  Speaker 1: and for memory secured it, the awful image passed away,
• 3:38:12
  Speaker 1: dark as midnight, in her black dress, her haggard beauty,
• 3:38:17
  Speaker 1: and her unutterable woe. She had looked at me long
• 3:38:22
  Speaker 1: enough to appear to say that her right to sit
• 3:38:25
  Speaker 1: at my table was as good as mine to sit
• 3:38:28
  Speaker 1: at hers. While these instants lasted, indeed, I had the
• 3:38:34
  Speaker 1: extraordinary chill a feeling that it was I who was
• 3:38:38
  Speaker 1: the intruder. It was as a wild protest against it,
• 3:38:43
  Speaker 1: that actually addressing her, you terrible, miserable woman. I heard
• 3:38:49
  Speaker 1: myself break into a sound that, by the open door,
• 3:38:53
  Speaker 1: rang through the long passage and the empty house. She
• 3:38:58
  Speaker 1: looked at me as if she heard me, but I
• 3:39:02
  Speaker 1: had recovered myself and cleared the air. There was nothing
• 3:39:07
  Speaker 1: in the room the next minute but the sunshine and
• 3:39:12
  Speaker 1: a sense that I must stay. End of Chapter fifteen,
• 3:39:21
  Speaker 1: Chapter sixteen. I had so perfectly expected that the return
• 3:39:28
  Speaker 1: of my pupils would be marked by a demonstration that
• 3:39:32
  Speaker 1: I was freshly upset at having to take into account
• 3:39:36
  Speaker 1: that they were dumb about my absence. Instead of gaily
• 3:39:40
  Speaker 1: denouncing and caressing me, they made no allusion to my
• 3:39:44
  Speaker 1: having failed them, and I was left for the time
• 3:39:49
  Speaker 1: on perceiving that she too said nothing to study missus
• 3:39:53
  Speaker 1: Grose's odd face. I did this to such purpose that
• 3:39:58
  Speaker 1: I made sure they had in s way bribed her
• 3:40:01
  Speaker 1: to silence, a silence that, however, I would engage to
• 3:40:07
  Speaker 1: break down on the first private opportunity. This opportunity came
• 3:40:13
  Speaker 1: before Tea. I secured five minutes with her in the
• 3:40:17
  Speaker 1: housekeeper's room, where in the twilight, amid a smell of
• 3:40:22
  Speaker 1: lately baked bread, but with the place all swept and garnished,
• 3:40:28
  Speaker 1: I found her sitting in pained placidity before the fire.
• 3:40:33
  Speaker 1: So I see her still, So I see her best,
• 3:40:39
  Speaker 1: facing the flame from her straight chair in the dusky
• 3:40:42
  Speaker 1: shining room, A large clean image of the put away
• 3:40:48
  Speaker 1: of drawers, closed and locked and rest without a remedy. Oh. Yes,
• 3:40:56
  Speaker 1: they asked me to say nothing and to please them
• 3:41:00
  Speaker 1: so long as they were there. Of course, I promised.
• 3:41:06
  Speaker 1: But what had happened to you? I only went with
• 3:41:11
  Speaker 1: you for the walk? I said, I had then come
• 3:41:15
  Speaker 1: back to meet a friend. She showed her surprise, A
• 3:41:20
  Speaker 1: friend you. Oh, yes, I have a couple, I laughed.
• 3:41:27
  Speaker 1: But did the children give you a reason for not
• 3:41:30
  Speaker 1: alluding to your leaving us? Yes, they said you would
• 3:41:35
  Speaker 1: like it better? Do you like it better? My face
• 3:41:39
  Speaker 1: had made her rueful. No, I like it worse. But
• 3:41:45
  Speaker 1: after an instant I added, did they say why I
• 3:41:48
  Speaker 1: should like it better?
• 3:41:50
  Speaker 2: No?
• 3:41:51
  Speaker 1: Master Miles only said we must do nothing. But what
• 3:41:54
  Speaker 1: she likes I wish indeed he would. And what did
• 3:42:00
  Speaker 1: Flora say? Miss Flora was too sweet? She said, Oh,
• 3:42:06
  Speaker 1: of course, of course, and I said the same. I
• 3:42:10
  Speaker 1: thought a moment you were too sweet. Two. I can
• 3:42:17
  Speaker 1: hear you all, but none the less between Miles and me.
• 3:42:21
  Speaker 1: It's now all out, all out. My companion stared, But
• 3:42:29
  Speaker 1: what miss everything, It doesn't matter. I've made up my mind.
• 3:42:37
  Speaker 1: I came home, my dear, I went on for a
• 3:42:42
  Speaker 1: talk with Miss Jessel. I had by this time formed
• 3:42:47
  Speaker 1: the habit of having Missus gross literally well in hand
• 3:42:50
  Speaker 1: in advance of my sounding that note, so that even
• 3:42:54
  Speaker 1: now as she bravely blinked under the signal of my word,
• 3:42:59
  Speaker 1: I could keep her comparatively firm a talk. Do you
• 3:43:04
  Speaker 1: mean she spoke? It came to that I found her
• 3:43:11
  Speaker 1: on my return in the schoolroom, and what did she say?
• 3:43:17
  Speaker 1: I can hear the good woman still, and the candor
• 3:43:21
  Speaker 1: of her stupefication that she suffers the torments. It was
• 3:43:26
  Speaker 1: this of a truth that made her, as she filled
• 3:43:30
  Speaker 1: out my picture gape. Do you mean she faltered? Of
• 3:43:37
  Speaker 1: the lost, of the lost, of the damned? And that's
• 3:43:44
  Speaker 1: why to share them? I faltered myself with the horror
• 3:43:49
  Speaker 1: of it. But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up.
• 3:43:56
  Speaker 1: Do share them? She wants Flora Ah, Missus Grosse might,
• 3:44:02
  Speaker 1: as I gave it to her, fairly have fallen away
• 3:44:05
  Speaker 1: from me had I not been prepared. I still held
• 3:44:09
  Speaker 1: her there to show I was as I've told you. However,
• 3:44:15
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter because you've made up your mind. But
• 3:44:20
  Speaker 1: to what? To everything? And what do you call everything?
• 3:44:28
  Speaker 1: Why sending for their uncle? Oh? Miss? And pity do
• 3:44:35
  Speaker 1: my friend broke out? Ah? But I will, I will,
• 3:44:41
  Speaker 1: I see it's the only way. What's out, as I
• 3:44:47
  Speaker 1: told you with Miles, is that if he thinks I'm
• 3:44:51
  Speaker 1: afraid to and has ideas of what he gains by that,
• 3:44:56
  Speaker 1: he shall see he's mistaken. Yes, yes, his uncle shall
• 3:45:02
  Speaker 1: have it here from me, on the spot, and before
• 3:45:06
  Speaker 1: the boy himself, if necessary. And if I'm to be
• 3:45:09
  Speaker 1: reproached with having done nothing again about more school, yes, miss,
• 3:45:16
  Speaker 1: my companion pressed me, Well, there's that awful reason. There
• 3:45:24
  Speaker 1: were now clearly so many of these for my poor
• 3:45:27
  Speaker 1: colleague that she was excusable for being vague. But a
• 3:45:32
  Speaker 1: which why the letter from his old place? You'll show
• 3:45:38
  Speaker 1: it to the master. I ought to have done so
• 3:45:42
  Speaker 1: on the instant. Oh no, said missus Grosse. With decision,
• 3:45:49
  Speaker 1: I'll put it before him. I went on, inexorably that
• 3:45:54
  Speaker 1: I can't undertake to work the question on behalf of
• 3:45:57
  Speaker 1: a child who has been expelled, though we've never in
• 3:46:02
  Speaker 1: the least known what missus gross declared for wickedness? For
• 3:46:09
  Speaker 1: what else? When he's so clever and beautiful and perfect?
• 3:46:14
  Speaker 1: Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is
• 3:46:21
  Speaker 1: he ill natured? His exquisite? So it can be only that?
• 3:46:29
  Speaker 1: And that would open up the whole thing. After all,
• 3:46:34
  Speaker 1: I said, it's their uncle's fault if he left here
• 3:46:38
  Speaker 1: such people, he didn't really in the least know them,
• 3:46:44
  Speaker 1: The fault's mine. She had turned quite pale. Well, you
• 3:46:50
  Speaker 1: shan't suffer, I answered, the children shan't. She emphatically returned.
• 3:46:58
  Speaker 1: I was silent a while. We looked at each other.
• 3:47:02
  Speaker 1: Then what am I to tell him? You needn't tell
• 3:47:06
  Speaker 1: him anything. I'll tell him. I measured this. Do you
• 3:47:12
  Speaker 1: mean you'll write? Remembering she couldn't, I coughed myself up.
• 3:47:19
  Speaker 1: How do you communicate? I tell the bailiff he writes,
• 3:47:27
  Speaker 1: and should you like him to write our story? My
• 3:47:31
  Speaker 1: question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended,
• 3:47:35
  Speaker 1: and it made her. After a moment, then consequently break down.
• 3:47:42
  Speaker 1: The tears were again in her eyes. Ah, miss you
• 3:47:47
  Speaker 1: write well to night, I at last answered, and on
• 3:47:55
  Speaker 1: this we separated Chapter sixteen Chapter seventeen. I went so
• 3:48:06
  Speaker 1: far in the evening as to make a beginning. The
• 3:48:10
  Speaker 1: weather had changed back, a great wind was abroad, and
• 3:48:15
  Speaker 1: beneath the lamp in my room, with floor at piece
• 3:48:19
  Speaker 1: beside me, I sat for a long time before a
• 3:48:23
  Speaker 1: blank sheet of paper and listened to the lash of
• 3:48:26
  Speaker 1: the rain and the batter of the gusts. Finally I
• 3:48:30
  Speaker 1: went out, taking a candle. I crossed the passage and
• 3:48:35
  Speaker 1: listened a minute at Myles's door. What, under my endless
• 3:48:41
  Speaker 1: obsession I had been impelled to listen for was some
• 3:48:45
  Speaker 1: betrayal of his not being at rest, And I presently
• 3:48:49
  Speaker 1: caught one, but not in the form I had expected.
• 3:48:54
  Speaker 1: His voice tinkled out, I say you there, Come in.
• 3:49:00
  Speaker 1: It was a gaiety in the gloom. I went in
• 3:49:04
  Speaker 1: with my light and found him in bed, very wide awake,
• 3:49:09
  Speaker 1: but very much at his ease. Well, what are you
• 3:49:14
  Speaker 1: up to? He asked, with a grace of sociability, in
• 3:49:18
  Speaker 1: which it occurred to me that missus Gross, had she
• 3:49:21
  Speaker 1: been present, might have looked in vain for proof that
• 3:49:24
  Speaker 1: anything was out. I stood over him with my candle.
• 3:49:30
  Speaker 1: How did you know I was there? Why? Of course
• 3:49:34
  Speaker 1: I heard you. Did you fancy? You made no noise.
• 3:49:38
  Speaker 1: You're like a troop of cavalry, he beautifully laughed. Then
• 3:49:43
  Speaker 1: you weren't asleep, not much. I lie awake and think
• 3:49:50
  Speaker 1: I had put my candle designedly a short way off,
• 3:49:55
  Speaker 1: and then, as he held out his friendly old hand
• 3:49:59
  Speaker 1: to me, had sat down on the edge of his bed.
• 3:50:02
  Speaker 1: What is it? I asked that you think of what
• 3:50:07
  Speaker 1: in the world, my dear, But you ah, and the
• 3:50:12
  Speaker 1: pride I take in your appreciation doesn't insist on that
• 3:50:17
  Speaker 1: I had so far. Rather you slept well? I think also,
• 3:50:22
  Speaker 1: you know of this queer business of ours? I marked
• 3:50:27
  Speaker 1: the coolness of his firm little hand. Of what queer business? Miles?
• 3:50:34
  Speaker 1: Why the way you bring me up? And all the rest?
• 3:50:39
  Speaker 1: I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from
• 3:50:42
  Speaker 1: my glimmering taper there was light enough to show how
• 3:50:45
  Speaker 1: he smiled up at me from his pillow. What do
• 3:50:49
  Speaker 1: you mean by all the rest? Oh? You know? You know?
• 3:50:58
  Speaker 1: I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt,
• 3:51:02
  Speaker 1: as I held his hand and our eyes continued to
• 3:51:05
  Speaker 1: meet that my silence had all the air of admitting
• 3:51:09
  Speaker 1: his charge, and that nothing in the whole world of
• 3:51:13
  Speaker 1: reality was perhaps at that moment so fabulous as our
• 3:51:19
  Speaker 1: actual relation. Certainly you shall go back to school, I said,
• 3:51:24
  Speaker 1: if it be that that troubles you, but not to
• 3:51:28
  Speaker 1: the old place. We must find another better. How could
• 3:51:34
  Speaker 1: I know it did trouble you this question when you
• 3:51:37
  Speaker 1: never told me so, never spoke of it at all.
• 3:51:42
  Speaker 1: His clear, listening face, framed in its smooth whiteness, made him,
• 3:51:47
  Speaker 1: for the minute, as appealing as some wistful patient in
• 3:51:51
  Speaker 1: a children's hospital. And I would have given, as the
• 3:51:55
  Speaker 1: resemblance came to me, all I possessed on earth really
• 3:52:01
  Speaker 1: to be the nurse or the sister of charity who
• 3:52:04
  Speaker 1: might have helped to cure him well, even as it
• 3:52:09
  Speaker 1: was I perhaps might help. Do you know you've never
• 3:52:15
  Speaker 1: said a word to me about your school, I mean,
• 3:52:18
  Speaker 1: the old one, never mentioned it in any way, he
• 3:52:24
  Speaker 1: seemed to wonder. He smiled with the same loveliness, but
• 3:52:30
  Speaker 1: he clearly gained time. He waited. He called for guidance,
• 3:52:39
  Speaker 1: haven't I It wasn't for me to help him. It
• 3:52:43
  Speaker 1: was for the thing I had met something in his
• 3:52:46
  Speaker 1: tone and the expression of his face as I got
• 3:52:50
  Speaker 1: this from him set my heart aching with such a
• 3:52:54
  Speaker 1: pang as it had never yet known. So unutterably touching
• 3:52:59
  Speaker 1: was it to see his little brain puzzled and his
• 3:53:03
  Speaker 1: little resources taxed to play under the spell laid on
• 3:53:07
  Speaker 1: him a part of innocence and consistency. No, never, from
• 3:53:13
  Speaker 1: the hour you came back, you've never mentioned to me
• 3:53:16
  Speaker 1: one of your masters, one of your comrades, nor the
• 3:53:20
  Speaker 1: least little thing that ever happened to you at school. Never,
• 3:53:24
  Speaker 1: little Miles, No, never have you given me an inkling
• 3:53:28
  Speaker 1: of anything that may have happened there. Therefore, you can
• 3:53:32
  Speaker 1: fancy how much I'm in the dark until you came
• 3:53:36
  Speaker 1: out that way this morning. You had, since the first
• 3:53:40
  Speaker 1: hour I saw you, scarce even made a reference to
• 3:53:44
  Speaker 1: anything in your previous life. You seemed so perfectly to
• 3:53:48
  Speaker 1: accept the present. It was extraordinary how my absolute conviction
• 3:53:54
  Speaker 1: of his secret precocity, or whatever I might call the
• 3:53:57
  Speaker 1: poison of an influence that I dared but half to phrase,
• 3:54:02
  Speaker 1: made him, in spite of the faint breath of his
• 3:54:06
  Speaker 1: inward trouble, appear as accessible as an older person imposed
• 3:54:11
  Speaker 1: him almost as an intellectual equal. I thought you wanted
• 3:54:16
  Speaker 1: to go on as you are. It struck me that
• 3:54:19
  Speaker 1: at this he just faintly colored. He gave at any rate,
• 3:54:24
  Speaker 1: like a convalescent, slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his head.
• 3:54:30
  Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. I want to get away. You're
• 3:54:35
  Speaker 1: tired of bly? Oh no, I like BLI well, then, oh,
• 3:54:41
  Speaker 1: you know what a boy wants. I felt that I
• 3:54:44
  Speaker 1: didn't know so well as myles and I took temporary refuge.
• 3:54:50
  Speaker 1: You want to go to your uncle again? At this,
• 3:54:55
  Speaker 1: his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the pillow. Ah,
• 3:55:01
  Speaker 1: you can't get off with that. I was silent a little,
• 3:55:05
  Speaker 1: and it was I. Now, I think who changed color?
• 3:55:11
  Speaker 1: My dear, I don't want to get off. You can't.
• 3:55:15
  Speaker 1: Even if you do, you can't, you can't. He lay, beautifully, staring.
• 3:55:22
  Speaker 1: My uncle must come down, and you must completely settle things.
• 3:55:27
  Speaker 1: If we do, I returned with some spirit. You may
• 3:55:32
  Speaker 1: be sure it will be to take you quite away. Well,
• 3:55:35
  Speaker 1: don't you understand that that's exactly what I'm working for.
• 3:55:40
  Speaker 1: You'll have to tell him about the way you've let
• 3:55:44
  Speaker 1: it all drop. You'll have to tell him a tremendous lot.
• 3:55:49
  Speaker 1: The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow,
• 3:55:53
  Speaker 1: for the instant to meet him rather more. And how
• 3:55:57
  Speaker 1: much will you, Myles, to tell him? There are things
• 3:56:02
  Speaker 1: he'll ask you? He turned it over very lightly. But
• 3:56:08
  Speaker 1: what things? The things you've never told me? To make
• 3:56:14
  Speaker 1: up his mind what to do with you? He can't
• 3:56:17
  Speaker 1: send you back. Oh, I don't want to go back,
• 3:56:20
  Speaker 1: he broke in. I want a new field. He said
• 3:56:25
  Speaker 1: it with admirable serenity, with positive, unimpeachable gaiety, And doubtless
• 3:56:32
  Speaker 1: it was that very note that most evoked for me
• 3:56:35
  Speaker 1: the poignancy, the unnatural, childish tragedy of his probable reappearance
• 3:56:41
  Speaker 1: at the end of three months, with all this bravado
• 3:56:44
  Speaker 1: and still more dishonor. It overwhelmed me now that I
• 3:56:48
  Speaker 1: should never be able to bear that, and it made
• 3:56:52
  Speaker 1: me let myself go. I threw myself upon him, and
• 3:56:57
  Speaker 1: in the tenderness of my pity, I am him, dear
• 3:57:02
  Speaker 1: little Miles, dear little miles. My face was close to his,
• 3:57:08
  Speaker 1: and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with
• 3:57:12
  Speaker 1: indulgent good humor. Well, old lady, is there nothing nothing
• 3:57:18
  Speaker 1: at all that you want to tell me. He turned
• 3:57:21
  Speaker 1: off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding
• 3:57:25
  Speaker 1: up his hand to look at as one had seen
• 3:57:28
  Speaker 1: sick children. Look, I've told you, I told you this morning. Oh,
• 3:57:35
  Speaker 1: I was sorry for him, that you just want me
• 3:57:38
  Speaker 1: not to worry you. He looked round at me now,
• 3:57:42
  Speaker 1: as if in recognition of my understanding him. Then ever
• 3:57:46
  Speaker 1: so gently, to let me alone, he replied, there was
• 3:57:52
  Speaker 1: even a singular little dignity in it, something that made
• 3:57:56
  Speaker 1: me release him. Yet, when I had slowly risen finger
• 3:58:00
  Speaker 1: beside him, Garden knows I never wished to harass him,
• 3:58:04
  Speaker 1: but I felt that merely at this to turn my
• 3:58:08
  Speaker 1: back on him was to abandon, or, to put it
• 3:58:11
  Speaker 1: more truly, to lose him. I've just begun a letter
• 3:58:17
  Speaker 1: to your uncle, I said, Well, then finish it. I
• 3:58:22
  Speaker 1: waited a minute. What happened before? He gazed up at
• 3:58:28
  Speaker 1: me again? But for what before you came back and
• 3:58:35
  Speaker 1: before you went away? For some time he was silent,
• 3:58:39
  Speaker 1: but he continued to meet my eyes. What happened it
• 3:58:45
  Speaker 1: made me the sound of the words in which it
• 3:58:49
  Speaker 1: seemed to me that I caught, for the very first time,
• 3:58:52
  Speaker 1: a small, faint quaver of consenting consciousness. It made me
• 3:58:57
  Speaker 1: drop on my knees beside the bed and see ease
• 3:59:00
  Speaker 1: once more, the chance of possessing him. Dear little Miles,
• 3:59:05
  Speaker 1: Dear little miles. If you knew how I want to
• 3:59:08
  Speaker 1: help you, it's only that, it's nothing but that. And
• 3:59:13
  Speaker 1: I'd rather die than give you a pain or do
• 3:59:15
  Speaker 1: you a wrong. I'd rather die than heart a hear
• 3:59:18
  Speaker 1: of you, dear little Miles. Oh, I brought it out now,
• 3:59:25
  Speaker 1: even if I should go too far, I just want
• 3:59:30
  Speaker 1: you to help me, to save you. But I knew
• 3:59:34
  Speaker 1: in a moment after this that I had gone too far.
• 3:59:37
  Speaker 1: The answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but it came
• 3:59:41
  Speaker 1: in the form of an extraordinary blast and chill her
• 3:59:45
  Speaker 1: gust of frozen air, and to shake of the room
• 3:59:48
  Speaker 1: as great as if in the wild wind the casement
• 3:59:53
  Speaker 1: had crashed in. The boy gave a loud, high shriek,
• 3:59:58
  Speaker 1: which lost in the re The shock of sound might
• 4:00:02
  Speaker 1: have seemed indistinctly, though I was so close to him,
• 4:00:08
  Speaker 1: a note either of jubilation or of terror. I jumped
• 4:00:13
  Speaker 1: to my feet again and was conscious of darkness. So
• 4:00:17
  Speaker 1: for a moment we remained while I stared about me
• 4:00:22
  Speaker 1: and saw that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the
• 4:00:25
  Speaker 1: window tight. Why the candles out? I then cried, It
• 4:00:32
  Speaker 1: was I who blew it, dear, said Myles end of
• 4:00:39
  Speaker 1: Chapter seventeen, Chapter eighteen. The next day, after lessons, Missus
• 4:00:46
  Speaker 1: Grose found a moment to say to me quietly, have
• 4:00:49
  Speaker 1: you written? Miss Yes, I've written, But I didn't add
• 4:00:54
  Speaker 1: for the hour that my letter, sealed and directed was
• 4:00:58
  Speaker 1: still in my pocket. There would be time enough to
• 4:01:01
  Speaker 1: send it before the messenger should go to the village. Meanwhile,
• 4:01:06
  Speaker 1: there had been on the part of my pupils, no
• 4:01:10
  Speaker 1: more brilliant, more exemplary morning. It was exactly as if
• 4:01:15
  Speaker 1: they had both had at heart to gloss over any
• 4:01:18
  Speaker 1: recent little friction. They performed the dizziest feats of arithmetic,
• 4:01:24
  Speaker 1: soaring quite out of my feeble range, and perpetrated in
• 4:01:28
  Speaker 1: higher spirits than ever geographical and historical jokes. It was conspicuous,
• 4:01:35
  Speaker 1: of course, and Miles in particular, that he appeared to
• 4:01:38
  Speaker 1: wish to show how easily he could let me down.
• 4:01:42
  Speaker 1: This child, to my memory, really lives in a setting
• 4:01:46
  Speaker 1: of beauty and misery that no words can translate. There
• 4:01:53
  Speaker 1: was a distinction all his own and every impulse he
• 4:01:57
  Speaker 1: revealed never was a small nat natural creature to the
• 4:02:02
  Speaker 1: uninitiated eye, all frankness and freedom, A more ingenious, a
• 4:02:08
  Speaker 1: more extraordinary, little gentleman. I had perpetually to guard against
• 4:02:14
  Speaker 1: the wonder of contemplation into which my initiated view betrayed me,
• 4:02:19
  Speaker 1: to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged sigh in which
• 4:02:24
  Speaker 1: I constantly both attacked and renounced the enigma of what
• 4:02:29
  Speaker 1: such a little gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty.
• 4:02:34
  Speaker 1: Say that by the dark prodigy, I knew the imagination
• 4:02:39
  Speaker 1: of all evil had been opened up to him. Oh,
• 4:02:42
  Speaker 1: the justice within me ached for the proof that it
• 4:02:45
  Speaker 1: could ever have flowered into an act he had never
• 4:02:49
  Speaker 1: at any rate from such a little gentleman, as when
• 4:02:53
  Speaker 1: after our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came
• 4:02:58
  Speaker 1: round to me and asked if I should like him
• 4:03:01
  Speaker 1: for half an hour to play to me. David playing
• 4:03:06
  Speaker 1: to Saul could never have shown a finer sense of
• 4:03:08
  Speaker 1: the occasion. It was literally a charming exhibition of tact
• 4:03:13
  Speaker 1: of magnanimity, and quite tantamount to his saying outright, the
• 4:03:18
  Speaker 1: true knights we love to read about never push an
• 4:03:22
  Speaker 1: advantage too far. I know what you mean. Now, you
• 4:03:26
  Speaker 1: mean that to be let alone yourself and not followed up,
• 4:03:32
  Speaker 1: you'll cease to worry and spy upon me. Won't keep
• 4:03:36
  Speaker 1: me so close to you, or let me go and come? Well,
• 4:03:42
  Speaker 1: I come, you see, but I don't go. There'll be
• 4:03:47
  Speaker 1: plenty of time for that. I do really delight in
• 4:03:50
  Speaker 1: your society, and I only want to show you that
• 4:03:54
  Speaker 1: I contend for a principle. It may be imagined whether
• 4:03:58
  Speaker 1: I resisted this appear or failed to accompany him again
• 4:04:03
  Speaker 1: hand in hand to the school room. He sat down
• 4:04:07
  Speaker 1: at the old piano and played as he had never played.
• 4:04:11
  Speaker 1: And if there are those who think he had better
• 4:04:13
  Speaker 1: have been kicking a football, I can only say that
• 4:04:16
  Speaker 1: I wholly agree with them, for at the end of
• 4:04:19
  Speaker 1: a time that under his influence I had quite ceased
• 4:04:22
  Speaker 1: to measure. I started up with a strange sense of
• 4:04:26
  Speaker 1: having literally slept at my post. It was after luncheon
• 4:04:30
  Speaker 1: and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I hadn't really
• 4:04:33
  Speaker 1: in the least slept. I had only done something much worse.
• 4:04:39
  Speaker 1: I had forgotten where all this time was Flora. When
• 4:04:44
  Speaker 1: I put the question to Myles, he played on a
• 4:04:47
  Speaker 1: minute before answering, and then could only say, why, my dear,
• 4:04:51
  Speaker 1: how do I know, preaking moreover into a happy laugh, which,
• 4:04:57
  Speaker 1: immediately after, as if it were a vote accompaniment, he
• 4:05:01
  Speaker 1: prolonged into incoherent extravagant song. I went straight to my room,
• 4:05:07
  Speaker 1: but his sister was not there. Then, before going downstairs,
• 4:05:12
  Speaker 1: I looked into several others. As she was nowhere about.
• 4:05:15
  Speaker 1: She would surely be with missus Grosse, whom, in the
• 4:05:18
  Speaker 1: comfort of that theory, I accordingly proceeded in quest of
• 4:05:23
  Speaker 1: I found her where I had found her the evening before.
• 4:05:26
  Speaker 1: But she met my quick challenge with blank, scared ignorance.
• 4:05:30
  Speaker 1: She had only supposed that after the repast I had
• 4:05:33
  Speaker 1: carried off both the children, as to which she was
• 4:05:36
  Speaker 1: quite in her right, for it was the very first
• 4:05:39
  Speaker 1: time I had allowed the little girl out of my
• 4:05:41
  Speaker 1: sight without some special provision. Of course, now, indeed she
• 4:05:46
  Speaker 1: might be with the maids, so that the immediate thing
• 4:05:49
  Speaker 1: was to look for her without an air of alarm.
• 4:05:52
  Speaker 1: This we promptly arranged between us. But when ten minutes later,
• 4:05:57
  Speaker 1: and in pursuance of our agreement, we met in the hall,
• 4:06:02
  Speaker 1: it was only to report on either side that after
• 4:06:04
  Speaker 1: guarded inquiries, we had altogether failed to trace her. For
• 4:06:09
  Speaker 1: a minute there, apart from observation, we exchanged mute alarms,
• 4:06:15
  Speaker 1: and I could feel with what high interest my friend
• 4:06:19
  Speaker 1: returned me all those I had from the first given her.
• 4:06:23
  Speaker 1: She'll be above, she presently said, in one of the rooms.
• 4:06:27
  Speaker 1: You haven't searched. No, she's at a distance. I had
• 4:06:32
  Speaker 1: made up my mind. She has gone out. Missus Gross
• 4:06:37
  Speaker 1: stared without a hat. I naturally also looked volumes. Isn't
• 4:06:44
  Speaker 1: that woman always without one? She's with her, She's with her,
• 4:06:49
  Speaker 1: I declared, we must find them. My hand was on
• 4:06:53
  Speaker 1: my friend's arm. But she failed, for the moment, confronted
• 4:06:56
  Speaker 1: with such an account of the matter, to respond to
• 4:06:59
  Speaker 1: my pressure. She communed on the contrary, on the spot
• 4:07:03
  Speaker 1: with her uneasiness, And where's Master Miles. Oh, he's with Quint.
• 4:07:11
  Speaker 1: They're in the schoolroom, Lord miss my view, I was
• 4:07:17
  Speaker 1: myself aware, and therefore I suppose my tone had never
• 4:07:21
  Speaker 1: yet reached so calm an assurance. The tricks played, I
• 4:07:26
  Speaker 1: went on, they have successfully worked their plan. He found
• 4:07:30
  Speaker 1: the most divine little way to keep me quiet while
• 4:07:33
  Speaker 1: she went off. Divine Missus Gross bewilderedly, echoed infernal. Then
• 4:07:41
  Speaker 1: I almost cheerfully rejoined, he has provided for himself as well.
• 4:07:47
  Speaker 1: But come she had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions.
• 4:07:52
  Speaker 1: You leave him so long with quint Yes, I don't
• 4:07:58
  Speaker 1: mind that. Now. She always ended at these moments by
• 4:08:02
  Speaker 1: getting possession of my hand, and in this manner she
• 4:08:06
  Speaker 1: could at present still stay me. But after grasping an
• 4:08:10
  Speaker 1: instant at my sudden resignation because of your letter, she
• 4:08:14
  Speaker 1: eagerly brought out. I quickly, by the way of answer,
• 4:08:18
  Speaker 1: felt for my letter, drew it forth, held it up,
• 4:08:21
  Speaker 1: and then, freeing myself, went and made it on the
• 4:08:24
  Speaker 1: great hall table. Luke will take it, I said. As
• 4:08:29
  Speaker 1: I came back. I reached the house door and opened it.
• 4:08:32
  Speaker 1: I was already on the steps. My companion still demurred.
• 4:08:38
  Speaker 1: The storm of the night and the early morning had dropped,
• 4:08:41
  Speaker 1: but the afternoon was damp and gray. I came down
• 4:08:46
  Speaker 1: to the drive while she stood in the doorway. You
• 4:08:49
  Speaker 1: go with nothing on what do I care when the
• 4:08:52
  Speaker 1: child has nothing. I can't wait to dress, I cried,
• 4:08:58
  Speaker 1: And if you must do so, I leave you. Try
• 4:09:01
  Speaker 1: meanwhile yourself upstairs with them. O on this the poor
• 4:09:07
  Speaker 1: woman promptly joined me. End of Chapter eighteen, Chapter nineteen.
• 4:09:17
  Speaker 1: We went straight to the lake as it was called
• 4:09:20
  Speaker 1: at Bly, and I dare say rightly called, though I
• 4:09:24
  Speaker 1: reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet
• 4:09:26
  Speaker 1: of water, less remarkable than it appeared to my untraveled eyes.
• 4:09:31
  Speaker 1: My acquaintance with sheets of water was small, and the
• 4:09:35
  Speaker 1: pool of Bly at all events, on the few occasions
• 4:09:38
  Speaker 1: of my consenting, under the protection of my pupils, to
• 4:09:42
  Speaker 1: affront its surface in the old flat bottomed boat moored
• 4:09:46
  Speaker 1: there for our use, had impressed me, both with its
• 4:09:50
  Speaker 1: extent and its agitation. The usual place of embarkation was
• 4:09:55
  Speaker 1: half a mile from the house, but I had an
• 4:09:58
  Speaker 1: intimate conviction that wherever Flora might be, she was not
• 4:10:03
  Speaker 1: near home. She had not given me the slip for
• 4:10:06
  Speaker 1: any small adventure, and since the day of the very
• 4:10:10
  Speaker 1: great one that I had shared with her by the pond,
• 4:10:14
  Speaker 1: I had been aware in our walks of the quarter
• 4:10:17
  Speaker 1: to which he most inclined. This was why I had
• 4:10:21
  Speaker 1: now given to missus Grose's steps so marked a direction,
• 4:10:26
  Speaker 1: a direction that made her, when she perceived it, a pose,
• 4:10:30
  Speaker 1: a resistance that showed me she was freshly mystified. You
• 4:10:34
  Speaker 1: are going to the water, Miss you think she's in.
• 4:10:39
  Speaker 1: She may be, though the depth is I believe nowhere
• 4:10:43
  Speaker 1: very great. But what I judge most likely is that
• 4:10:47
  Speaker 1: she's on the spot from which the other day we
• 4:10:49
  Speaker 1: saw together what I told you, when she pretended not
• 4:10:54
  Speaker 1: to see with that astounding self possession. I've always been
• 4:10:58
  Speaker 1: sure she wanted to go back alone, and now her
• 4:11:02
  Speaker 1: brother has managed it for her. Missus Gros still stood
• 4:11:06
  Speaker 1: where she had stopped. You suppose they really talk of them,
• 4:11:11
  Speaker 1: I could meet this with a confidence. They say things
• 4:11:15
  Speaker 1: that if we heard them, would simply appall us. And
• 4:11:20
  Speaker 1: if she is there, yes, then Miss Jessel is beyond
• 4:11:27
  Speaker 1: a doubt. You shall see. Oh thank you, my friend cried,
• 4:11:34
  Speaker 1: planted so firm that taking it in I went straight
• 4:11:37
  Speaker 1: on without her. By the time I reached the pool, however,
• 4:11:42
  Speaker 1: she was close behind me, and I knew that whatever
• 4:11:46
  Speaker 1: to her apprehension might befall me, the exposure of my
• 4:11:50
  Speaker 1: society struck her as her least danger. She exhaled a
• 4:11:55
  Speaker 1: moan of relief as we at last came in sight
• 4:11:58
  Speaker 1: of the greater part of the water. Without a sight
• 4:12:02
  Speaker 1: of the child, there was no trace of flora on
• 4:12:05
  Speaker 1: that nearer side of the bank, where my observation of
• 4:12:09
  Speaker 1: her had been most startling, and none on the opposite edge, where,
• 4:12:14
  Speaker 1: save for a margin of some twenty yards, a thick
• 4:12:17
  Speaker 1: copse came down to the water. The pond oblong in shape,
• 4:12:23
  Speaker 1: had a whiff so scant compared to its length that,
• 4:12:27
  Speaker 1: with its ends out of view, it might have been
• 4:12:29
  Speaker 1: taken for a scant river. We looked at the empty expanse,
• 4:12:33
  Speaker 1: and then I felt the suggestion of my friend's eyes.
• 4:12:37
  Speaker 1: I knew what she meant, and I replied with a
• 4:12:40
  Speaker 1: negative head shake, No, no weight. She has taken the boat.
• 4:12:45
  Speaker 1: My companion stared at the vacant mooring place, and then
• 4:12:49
  Speaker 1: again across the lake. Then where is it? Our not
• 4:12:53
  Speaker 1: seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used
• 4:12:57
  Speaker 1: it to go over and then has men to hide
• 4:13:00
  Speaker 1: it all alone. That child, she's not alone, and at
• 4:13:07
  Speaker 1: such times she's not a child, She's an old, old woman.
• 4:13:13
  Speaker 1: I scanned all the visible shore, while missus gross took
• 4:13:17
  Speaker 1: again into the queer element. I offered her one of
• 4:13:21
  Speaker 1: her plunges of submission. Then I pointed out that the
• 4:13:24
  Speaker 1: boat might perfectly be in a small refuge formed by
• 4:13:28
  Speaker 1: one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation masked
• 4:13:33
  Speaker 1: for the hitherside by a projection of the bank, and
• 4:13:37
  Speaker 1: by a clump of trees growing close to the water.
• 4:13:40
  Speaker 1: But if the boat's there, where on earth? She my
• 4:13:45
  Speaker 1: colleague anxiously asked, that's exactly what we must learn. And
• 4:13:50
  Speaker 1: I started to walk further. By going all the way round,
• 4:13:55
  Speaker 1: certainly far as it is, it will take us but
• 4:13:59
  Speaker 1: ten minutes, but it's far enough to have made the
• 4:14:02
  Speaker 1: child prefer not to walk. She went straight over laws
• 4:14:07
  Speaker 1: cried my friend again. The chain of my logic was
• 4:14:11
  Speaker 1: ever too much for her. It dragged her at my
• 4:14:14
  Speaker 1: heels even now, And when we had got half way
• 4:14:17
  Speaker 1: round a devious, tiresome process on ground much broken and
• 4:14:22
  Speaker 1: by a path choked with overgrowth, I paused to give
• 4:14:26
  Speaker 1: her breath. I sustained her with a grateful arm, assuring
• 4:14:31
  Speaker 1: her that she might hugely help me. And this started
• 4:14:34
  Speaker 1: us afresh, so that in the course of but few
• 4:14:37
  Speaker 1: minutes more we reached a point from which we found
• 4:14:41
  Speaker 1: the boat to be where I had supposed it. It
• 4:14:44
  Speaker 1: had been intentionally left as much as possible out of sight,
• 4:14:48
  Speaker 1: and was tied to one of the stakes of a
• 4:14:50
  Speaker 1: fence that came just there down to the brink, and
• 4:14:54
  Speaker 1: that had been in assistance to disembarking. I recognized as
• 4:14:58
  Speaker 1: I looked at the pair of shops, thick oars quite
• 4:15:02
  Speaker 1: safely drawn up, the prodigious character of the feet for
• 4:15:06
  Speaker 1: a little girl. But I had lived by this time
• 4:15:10
  Speaker 1: too long among wonders, and had panted to too many
• 4:15:14
  Speaker 1: livelier measures. There was a gate in the fence through
• 4:15:19
  Speaker 1: which we passed, and that brought us, after a trifling interval,
• 4:15:25
  Speaker 1: more into the open. Then there she is, we both
• 4:15:29
  Speaker 1: exclaimed at once. Flora, a short way off, stood before
• 4:15:35
  Speaker 1: us on the grass and smiled as if her performance
• 4:15:39
  Speaker 1: was now complete. The next thing she did, however, was
• 4:15:43
  Speaker 1: to stoop straight down and pluck quite as if it
• 4:15:47
  Speaker 1: were all she was. Therefore a big, ugly spray of
• 4:15:51
  Speaker 1: withered fern. I instantly became sure she had just come
• 4:15:55
  Speaker 1: out of the copse. She waited for us, not herself
• 4:15:58
  Speaker 1: taking a step, and I was conscious of the rare
• 4:16:01
  Speaker 1: solemnity with which we presently approached her. She smiled and smiled,
• 4:16:07
  Speaker 1: and we met, but it was all done in a silence.
• 4:16:10
  Speaker 1: By this time flagrantly ominous. Missus Gross was the first
• 4:16:14
  Speaker 1: to break the spell. She threw herself on her knees, and,
• 4:16:19
  Speaker 1: drawing the child to her breast, clasped in a long
• 4:16:22
  Speaker 1: embrace the little, tender, yielding body. Where this dumb convulsion lasted,
• 4:16:27
  Speaker 1: I could only watch it, which I did the more
• 4:16:30
  Speaker 1: intently when I saw Flora's face peep at me over
• 4:16:34
  Speaker 1: our companion's shoulder. It was serious now. The flicker had
• 4:16:39
  Speaker 1: left it by its strengthened the pang with which I,
• 4:16:43
  Speaker 1: at that moment envied Missus Gross, the simplicity of her relation. Still.
• 4:16:49
  Speaker 1: All this while nothing more passed between us, save that
• 4:16:54
  Speaker 1: Flora had let her foolish fern again drop to the ground.
• 4:16:58
  Speaker 1: What she and I had virtually said to each other
• 4:17:01
  Speaker 1: was that pretexts were useless. Now. When Missus Gross finally
• 4:17:05
  Speaker 1: got up, she kept the child's hand so that the
• 4:17:08
  Speaker 1: two were still before me, And the singular reticence of
• 4:17:12
  Speaker 1: our communion was even more marked in the frank look
• 4:17:15
  Speaker 1: she launched me. I'll be hanged, it said, if I'll speak.
• 4:17:21
  Speaker 1: It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder,
• 4:17:25
  Speaker 1: was the first she was struck with our bare headed
• 4:17:28
  Speaker 1: aspect why where are your things? Where yours are, my dear,
• 4:17:33
  Speaker 1: I promptly returned. She had already got back her gaiety,
• 4:17:38
  Speaker 1: and appeared to take this as an answer quite sufficient,
• 4:17:41
  Speaker 1: And where smiles she went on. There was something in
• 4:17:46
  Speaker 1: the small valor of it that quite finished me. These
• 4:17:49
  Speaker 1: three words from her were in a flash, like the
• 4:17:53
  Speaker 1: glitter of a drawn blade, the jostle of the cup
• 4:17:56
  Speaker 1: that my hand for weeks and weeks had held eye
• 4:18:00
  Speaker 1: and full to the brim, that now, even before speaking,
• 4:18:05
  Speaker 1: I felt overflow in a deluge. I'll tell you if
• 4:18:10
  Speaker 1: you'll tell me, I heard myself say, then heard the
• 4:18:15
  Speaker 1: tremor in which it broke. Well, what missus Grose's suspense
• 4:18:20
  Speaker 1: blazed at me? But it was too late now, and
• 4:18:24
  Speaker 1: I brought the thing out handsomely. Where my pet is,
• 4:18:30
  Speaker 1: Miss Dressel. End of Chapter nineteen, Chapter twenty. Just as
• 4:18:40
  Speaker 1: in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon us,
• 4:18:44
  Speaker 1: much as I had made of the fact that this
• 4:18:47
  Speaker 1: name had never once between us been sounded. The quick,
• 4:18:52
  Speaker 1: smitten glare with which the child's face now received it
• 4:18:56
  Speaker 1: fairly likened my breach of the silence to the small
• 4:19:00
  Speaker 1: bush of a pane of glass, it added to the
• 4:19:03
  Speaker 1: interposing cry, as if to stay the blow, that Missus
• 4:19:08
  Speaker 1: Gross at the same instant uttered over my violence, the
• 4:19:12
  Speaker 1: shriek of a creature scared or rather wounded, which in turn,
• 4:19:18
  Speaker 1: within a few seconds was completed by a gasp of
• 4:19:21
  Speaker 1: my own. I seized my colleague's arm. She's there, She's there.
• 4:19:28
  Speaker 1: Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank, exactly
• 4:19:32
  Speaker 1: as she had stood the other time. And I remember,
• 4:19:35
  Speaker 1: strangely as the first feeling now produced in me, my
• 4:19:39
  Speaker 1: thrill of joy at having brought on a proof. She
• 4:19:43
  Speaker 1: was there, and I was justified. She was there, and
• 4:19:46
  Speaker 1: I was neither cruel nor mad. She was there for
• 4:19:49
  Speaker 1: poor scared Missus Grosse, but she was there most for Flora.
• 4:19:54
  Speaker 1: And no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps so
• 4:19:57
  Speaker 1: extraordinary as that in which I consciously threw out to her,
• 4:20:01
  Speaker 1: with the sense that pale and ravenous demon as she was,
• 4:20:06
  Speaker 1: she would catch and understand it. An inarticulate message of gratitude.
• 4:20:12
  Speaker 1: She rose erect on the spot my friend and I
• 4:20:14
  Speaker 1: had lately quitted, and there was not, in all the
• 4:20:18
  Speaker 1: long reach of her desire an inch of her evil
• 4:20:22
  Speaker 1: that fell short. This first vividness of vision and emotion
• 4:20:26
  Speaker 1: were things of a few seconds during which missus Grose's
• 4:20:30
  Speaker 1: dazed blink across to where I pointed struck me as
• 4:20:35
  Speaker 1: a sovereign sign that she too, at last saw, just
• 4:20:39
  Speaker 1: as it carried my own eyes precipitately to the child.
• 4:20:43
  Speaker 1: The revelation then of the manner in which Flora was
• 4:20:47
  Speaker 1: effected startled me, in truth, far more than it would
• 4:20:51
  Speaker 1: have done to find her all so merely agitated for
• 4:20:56
  Speaker 1: direct dismay. Was of course not what I had expected,
• 4:21:01
  Speaker 1: prepared in on her guard, as our pursuit had actually
• 4:21:04
  Speaker 1: made her she would repress every betrayal. And I was
• 4:21:09
  Speaker 1: therefore shaken on the spot by my first glimpse of
• 4:21:13
  Speaker 1: the particular one for which I had not allowed to
• 4:21:17
  Speaker 1: see her without a convulsion of her small pink face,
• 4:21:22
  Speaker 1: not even fain to glance in the direction of the prodigy,
• 4:21:25
  Speaker 1: I announced, But only instead of that turn at me
• 4:21:31
  Speaker 1: an expression of hard still gravity, an expression absolutely new
• 4:21:36
  Speaker 1: and unprecedented, and that appeared to read and accuse and
• 4:21:40
  Speaker 1: judge me. This was a stroke that somehow converted the
• 4:21:45
  Speaker 1: little girl herself into the very presence that could make
• 4:21:48
  Speaker 1: me quail. I quailed, even though my certitude that she
• 4:21:52
  Speaker 1: thoroughly saw was never greater than at that instant, and
• 4:21:57
  Speaker 1: in the immediate need to defend myself, I called it
• 4:22:01
  Speaker 1: passionately to witness. She is there, you little unhappy thing,
• 4:22:07
  Speaker 1: there there there, and you see her as well as
• 4:22:09
  Speaker 1: you see me. I had said shortly before to Missus
• 4:22:13
  Speaker 1: Grose that she was not at these times a child,
• 4:22:17
  Speaker 1: but an old, old woman, And that description of her
• 4:22:21
  Speaker 1: could not have been more strikingly confirmed than in the
• 4:22:24
  Speaker 1: way in which, for all the answer to this she
• 4:22:28
  Speaker 1: simply showed me, without a concession and admission of her eyes,
• 4:22:34
  Speaker 1: a countenance of deeper and deeper of indeed suddenly quite
• 4:22:38
  Speaker 1: fixed reprobation. I was, by this time, if I can
• 4:22:43
  Speaker 1: put the whole thing at all together, more appalled at
• 4:22:46
  Speaker 1: what I may properly call her manner than at anything else.
• 4:22:50
  Speaker 1: Though it was simultaneously with this that I became aware
• 4:22:54
  Speaker 1: of having Missus Grosse also, and very formidably, to reckon
• 4:22:58
  Speaker 1: with my elder companion. The next moment, at any rate,
• 4:23:03
  Speaker 1: blotted out everything but her own flushed face and her loud,
• 4:23:07
  Speaker 1: shocked protest a burst of high disapproval. What a dreadful turn.
• 4:23:12
  Speaker 1: To be sure, miss, where on earth do you see anything?
• 4:23:18
  Speaker 1: I could only grasp her more quickly. Yet, or even
• 4:23:22
  Speaker 1: while she spoke, the hideous plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted.
• 4:23:27
  Speaker 1: It had already lasted a minute, and it lasted while
• 4:23:30
  Speaker 1: I continued seizing my colleague, quite thrusting her at it
• 4:23:35
  Speaker 1: and presenting her to it, to insist with my pointing hand,
• 4:23:40
  Speaker 1: you don't see her exactly as we see, you mean
• 4:23:43
  Speaker 1: to say, you don't now now she's as big as
• 4:23:48
  Speaker 1: a blazing fire. Only look, dearest woman. Look. She looked
• 4:23:53
  Speaker 1: even as I did, and gave me with her deep
• 4:23:57
  Speaker 1: groan of negation, repulsion and compassion, the mixture with her
• 4:24:04
  Speaker 1: pity of her relief at her exemption, a sense touching
• 4:24:08
  Speaker 1: to me even then that she would have backed me
• 4:24:11
  Speaker 1: up if she could. I might well have needed that,
• 4:24:14
  Speaker 1: for with this hard blow of the proof that her
• 4:24:17
  Speaker 1: eyes were hopelessly sealed, I felt my own situation horribly crumble.
• 4:24:23
  Speaker 1: I felt I saw my livid predecessor press from her
• 4:24:29
  Speaker 1: position on my defeat, and I was conscious more than
• 4:24:34
  Speaker 1: all of what I should have from this instant to
• 4:24:37
  Speaker 1: deal with. In the astounding little attitude of Flora into
• 4:24:42
  Speaker 1: this attitude. Missus grose immediately and violently entered breaking even
• 4:24:47
  Speaker 1: while there pierced through my sense of ruin a prodigious
• 4:24:51
  Speaker 1: private triumph into breathless reassurance. She isn't there, little lady,
• 4:24:57
  Speaker 1: And nobody's there, and you never see nothing, My sweet
• 4:25:01
  Speaker 1: how can poor miss Jessel when poor miss Jessel's dead
• 4:25:05
  Speaker 1: and buried? We know, don't we? Love? And she appealed,
• 4:25:10
  Speaker 1: blundering in to the child. It's all a mere mistake
• 4:25:13
  Speaker 1: and a worry and a joke, and we'll go home
• 4:25:17
  Speaker 1: as fast as we can. Our companion on this had
• 4:25:21
  Speaker 1: responded with a strange, quick primness of propriety, and they
• 4:25:25
  Speaker 1: were again, with missus Grosse on her feet, united as
• 4:25:30
  Speaker 1: it were, in pained opposition to me. Flora continued to
• 4:25:35
  Speaker 1: fix me with her small mask of reprobation, And even
• 4:25:39
  Speaker 1: at that minute I prayed God to forgive me for
• 4:25:41
  Speaker 1: seeming to see that as she stood there, holding tight
• 4:25:45
  Speaker 1: to our friend's dress, her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly failed,
• 4:25:50
  Speaker 1: had quite vanished. I've said it already. She was literally
• 4:25:56
  Speaker 1: she was hideously hard. She had turned common and almost ugly.
• 4:26:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know what you mean. I see nobody, I
• 4:26:07
  Speaker 1: see nothing I never have. I think you're cruel. I
• 4:26:12
  Speaker 1: don't like you. Then, after this deliverance, which might have
• 4:26:17
  Speaker 1: been that of a vulgarly pert little girl in the street,
• 4:26:22
  Speaker 1: she hugged missus Grose more closely and buried in her
• 4:26:26
  Speaker 1: skirts the dreadful little face. In this position, she produced
• 4:26:30
  Speaker 1: an almost furious wail.
• 4:26:33
  Speaker 2: Take me away, Take me away, Oh, take me away
• 4:26:36
  Speaker 2: from her, from me. I panted from you, from you,
• 4:26:43
  Speaker 2: she cried. Even Missus Grose looked across at me dismayed. Well,
• 4:26:49
  Speaker 2: I had nothing to do but communicate again with the
• 4:26:52
  Speaker 2: figure that on the opposite bank, without a movement, as
• 4:26:57
  Speaker 2: rigidly still as if catching beyond the interval our voices,
• 4:27:03
  Speaker 2: was as vividly there for my disaster as it was
• 4:27:06
  Speaker 2: not there for my service. The wretched child had spoken
• 4:27:10
  Speaker 2: exactly as if she had got from some outside source
• 4:27:13
  Speaker 2: each of her stabbing little words. And I could, therefore,
• 4:27:17
  Speaker 2: in the full despair of all I had to accept
• 4:27:20
  Speaker 2: but sadly shake my head at her. If I had
• 4:27:24
  Speaker 2: ever doubted all, my doubt would at present have gone.
• 4:27:28
  Speaker 2: I've been living with the miserable truth, and now it
• 4:27:31
  Speaker 2: is only too much close round me.
• 4:27:34
  Speaker 1: Course, I've lost you. I've interfered, and you've seen under
• 4:27:39
  Speaker 1: her dictation with which I faced over the pool again,
• 4:27:43
  Speaker 1: our infernal witness, the easy and perfect way to meet it.
• 4:27:48
  Speaker 1: I've done my best, but I've lost you. Good Bye
• 4:27:54
  Speaker 1: for missus gross I had an imperative, an almost frantic
• 4:27:58
  Speaker 1: go go, before which an infinite distress, but mutely possessed
• 4:28:03
  Speaker 1: of the little girl, and clearly convinced, in spite of
• 4:28:07
  Speaker 1: her blindness, that something awful had occurred and some collapse
• 4:28:12
  Speaker 1: engulfed us. She retreated by the way we had come,
• 4:28:16
  Speaker 1: as fast as she could move. Of what first happened
• 4:28:20
  Speaker 1: when I was left alone, I had no subsequent memory.
• 4:28:24
  Speaker 1: I only knew that at the end of I suppose
• 4:28:27
  Speaker 1: a quarter of an hour, an odorous dampness and roughness,
• 4:28:32
  Speaker 1: chilling and piercing. My trouble had made me understand that
• 4:28:36
  Speaker 1: I must have thrown myself on my face on the
• 4:28:39
  Speaker 1: ground and given way to a wildness of grief. I
• 4:28:44
  Speaker 1: must have lain there long and cried and sobbed, for
• 4:28:48
  Speaker 1: when I raised my head the day was almost done.
• 4:28:53
  Speaker 1: I had got up and looked a moment through the
• 4:28:55
  Speaker 1: twilight at the gray pool and its blank Hannah did edge,
• 4:29:01
  Speaker 1: and then I took back to the house my dreary
• 4:29:06
  Speaker 1: and difficult course. When I reached the gate in the fence,
• 4:29:10
  Speaker 1: the boat, to my surprise, was gone, so that I
• 4:29:14
  Speaker 1: had a fresh reflection to make on Flora's extraordinary command
• 4:29:17
  Speaker 1: of the situation she passed that night by the most tacit,
• 4:29:22
  Speaker 1: and I should add, were not the words so grotesque
• 4:29:26
  Speaker 1: a false note the happiest of arrangements with missus gross
• 4:29:32
  Speaker 1: I saw neither of them on my return. But on
• 4:29:35
  Speaker 1: the other hand, as by an ambiguous compensation, I saw
• 4:29:40
  Speaker 1: a great deal of miles I saw, I can use
• 4:29:44
  Speaker 1: no other phrase, so much of him that it was
• 4:29:48
  Speaker 1: as if it were more than it had ever been.
• 4:29:52
  Speaker 1: No evening I had passed it bly had the portentous
• 4:29:56
  Speaker 1: quality of this one. In spite of which, and in
• 4:30:00
  Speaker 1: spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had
• 4:30:04
  Speaker 1: opened beneath my feet, there was literally in the ebbing,
• 4:30:09
  Speaker 1: actual and extraordinarily sweet sadness. On reaching the house, I
• 4:30:16
  Speaker 1: had never so much as looked for the boy. I
• 4:30:19
  Speaker 1: had simply gone straight to my room to change what
• 4:30:21
  Speaker 1: I was wearing, and to take in at a glance
• 4:30:25
  Speaker 1: much material testimony to Flora's rupture. Her little belongings had
• 4:30:29
  Speaker 1: all been removed. When later by the schoolroom fire, I
• 4:30:35
  Speaker 1: was served with tea by the usual maid. I indulged
• 4:30:39
  Speaker 1: on the article of my other pupil in no inquiry.
• 4:30:43
  Speaker 1: Whatever he had his freedom, now he might have it
• 4:30:48
  Speaker 1: to the end. Well, he did have it, and it
• 4:30:53
  Speaker 1: consisted in part at least of his coming in at
• 4:30:58
  Speaker 1: about eight o'clock down with me in silence. On the
• 4:31:02
  Speaker 1: removal of the tea things, I had blown out the
• 4:31:05
  Speaker 1: candles and drawn my chair closer. I was conscious of
• 4:31:09
  Speaker 1: a mortal coldness. It felt as if I should never
• 4:31:13
  Speaker 1: again be warm. So when he appeared, I was sitting
• 4:31:19
  Speaker 1: in the glow with my thoughts. He paused a moment
• 4:31:23
  Speaker 1: by the door, as if to look at me, then,
• 4:31:27
  Speaker 1: as if to share them, came to the other side
• 4:31:31
  Speaker 1: of the hearth, and sank into a chair, where he
• 4:31:34
  Speaker 1: sat there in absolute stillness. Yet he wanted I felt
• 4:31:41
  Speaker 1: to be with me, and of Chapter twenty Chapter twenty one,
• 4:31:49
  Speaker 1: before a new day in my room had fully broken,
• 4:31:52
  Speaker 1: my eyes opened to missus Gross, who had come to
• 4:31:55
  Speaker 1: my bedside with worse news. Flora was so markedly feverish
• 4:32:02
  Speaker 1: that an illness was perhaps at hand. She had passed
• 4:32:06
  Speaker 1: a night of extreme unrest, her night agitated above all
• 4:32:12
  Speaker 1: by fears that had for this subject not in the
• 4:32:15
  Speaker 1: least her former, but wholly her present governess. It was
• 4:32:21
  Speaker 1: not against the possible re entrance of Miss Jessel on
• 4:32:24
  Speaker 1: the scene that she protested. It was conspicuously and passionately
• 4:32:30
  Speaker 1: against mine. I was promptly on my feet, of course,
• 4:32:35
  Speaker 1: and with an immense deal to ask the more that
• 4:32:38
  Speaker 1: my friend had discernibly now girded her loins to meet
• 4:32:42
  Speaker 1: me once more. This I felt, as soon as I
• 4:32:45
  Speaker 1: had put to her the question of her sense of
• 4:32:48
  Speaker 1: the child's sincerity as against my own, she persists in
• 4:32:54
  Speaker 1: denying to you that she saw or has ever seen anything.
• 4:33:00
  Speaker 1: My visitor's trouble truly was great, Ah, Miss. It isn't
• 4:33:05
  Speaker 1: a matter on which I can push her. Yet it
• 4:33:09
  Speaker 1: isn't either, I must say, as if I much needed too.
• 4:33:14
  Speaker 1: It has made her every inch of her quite old. Oh,
• 4:33:22
  Speaker 1: I see her perfectly from here. She resents for all
• 4:33:28
  Speaker 1: the world like some high little personage, the imputation of
• 4:33:32
  Speaker 1: her truthfulness and, as it were, her respectability. Miss Jessel.
• 4:33:39
  Speaker 1: Indeed she ah, she's respectable. The chit, the impression she
• 4:33:46
  Speaker 1: gave me there yesterday was, I assure you, the very
• 4:33:50
  Speaker 1: strangest of all. It was quite beyond any of the others.
• 4:33:55
  Speaker 1: I did put my foot in it. She'll never speak
• 4:34:00
  Speaker 1: to me again. Hideous and obscure as it all was,
• 4:34:04
  Speaker 1: it held missus Gros briefly silent. Then she granted my
• 4:34:09
  Speaker 1: point with a frankness which I made sure had more
• 4:34:13
  Speaker 1: behind it. I think, indeed, Miss she never will. She
• 4:34:20
  Speaker 1: do have a grand manner about it. And that manner
• 4:34:24
  Speaker 1: I summed it up. Kis practically what's the matter with her?
• 4:34:28
  Speaker 1: Now o? That manner I could see in my visitor's face,
• 4:34:34
  Speaker 1: and not a little else. Besides, she asked me every
• 4:34:37
  Speaker 1: three minutes, if I think you're coming in? I see,
• 4:34:42
  Speaker 1: I see, I too on my side, had so much
• 4:34:46
  Speaker 1: more than worked it out? Has she said to you
• 4:34:49
  Speaker 1: since yesterday except to repudiate her familiarity with anything so dreadful.
• 4:34:55
  Speaker 1: A single other word about Miss Jessel, not one miss
• 4:35:02
  Speaker 1: And of course you know, my friend added, I took
• 4:35:07
  Speaker 1: it from her by the lake that just then, and
• 4:35:12
  Speaker 1: there at least there was nobody rather and naturally you
• 4:35:18
  Speaker 1: take it from her. Still I don't contradict her. What
• 4:35:24
  Speaker 1: else can I do? Nothing in the world. You've the
• 4:35:29
  Speaker 1: cleverest little person to deal with. They've made them. They're
• 4:35:33
  Speaker 1: two friends, I mean, still cleverer even than nature did,
• 4:35:39
  Speaker 1: for it was wondrous material to play on. Flora has
• 4:35:44
  Speaker 1: now her grievance, and she'll work it to the end. Yes,
• 4:35:48
  Speaker 1: miss but to what end? Why that of dealing with me?
• 4:35:53
  Speaker 1: To her uncle, she'll make me out to him the
• 4:35:57
  Speaker 1: lowest creature. I winced at the fair show of the scene.
• 4:36:01
  Speaker 1: In missus Grose's face. She looked for a minute as
• 4:36:04
  Speaker 1: if she sharply saw them together, And him who thinks
• 4:36:08
  Speaker 1: so well of you, he has an odd way. It
• 4:36:12
  Speaker 1: comes over me now, I laughed, of proving it. But
• 4:36:18
  Speaker 1: that doesn't matter. What Flora wants, of course, is to
• 4:36:22
  Speaker 1: get rid of me. My companion bravely concurred, never again
• 4:36:29
  Speaker 1: to so much as look at you. So that what
• 4:36:33
  Speaker 1: you've come to me now, for I asked, is to
• 4:36:38
  Speaker 1: speed me on my way. Before she had time to reply, however,
• 4:36:43
  Speaker 1: I had her in check. I've a better idea. The
• 4:36:47
  Speaker 1: result of my reflections, my going would seem the right thing,
• 4:36:54
  Speaker 1: And on Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet that
• 4:36:58
  Speaker 1: won't do. It's you who must go. You must take Flora,
• 4:37:04
  Speaker 1: my visitor at this did speculate, But where in the world,
• 4:37:10
  Speaker 1: away from here, away from them, her way even most
• 4:37:18
  Speaker 1: of all now from me, straight to her uncle, only
• 4:37:25
  Speaker 1: to tell on you no, not only to leave me
• 4:37:31
  Speaker 1: in addition with my remedy. She was still vague. And
• 4:37:37
  Speaker 1: what is your remedy? Your loyalty to begin with? And
• 4:37:43
  Speaker 1: then miles is She looked at me hard. Do you
• 4:37:48
  Speaker 1: think he won't, if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes,
• 4:37:54
  Speaker 1: I venture still to think it. Had all events, I
• 4:37:57
  Speaker 1: want to try get off the sister as soon as
• 4:38:00
  Speaker 1: possible and leave me with him alone. I was amazed
• 4:38:05
  Speaker 1: myself at the spirit I had still in reserve, and therefore,
• 4:38:09
  Speaker 1: perhaps a trifle the more disconcerted had the way in which,
• 4:38:14
  Speaker 1: in spite of this fine example of it, she hesitated.
• 4:38:18
  Speaker 1: There's one thing, of course, I went on, They mustn't
• 4:38:23
  Speaker 1: before she goes see each other. For three seconds. Then
• 4:38:28
  Speaker 1: it came over me that in spite of Flora's presumable
• 4:38:32
  Speaker 1: sequestration from the instant of her return from the pool,
• 4:38:37
  Speaker 1: it might already be too late? Do you mean? I
• 4:38:42
  Speaker 1: anxiously asked that they have met. At this she quite flushed. Ah,
• 4:38:49
  Speaker 1: miss I'm not such a fool as that. If I've
• 4:38:53
  Speaker 1: been obliged to leave her three or four times, it
• 4:38:57
  Speaker 1: has been each time with one of the maids, And
• 4:39:00
  Speaker 1: at present, though she's alone, she's locked in safe. And
• 4:39:04
  Speaker 1: yet and yet there were too many things. And yet
• 4:39:11
  Speaker 1: what well are you so sure of the little gentleman.
• 4:39:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure of anything but you. But I have
• 4:39:18
  Speaker 1: since last evening a new hope. I think he wants
• 4:39:22
  Speaker 1: to give me an opening. I do believe that poor
• 4:39:25
  Speaker 1: little exquisite wretch, he wants to speak. Last evening, in
• 4:39:30
  Speaker 1: the firelight and the silence, he sat with me for
• 4:39:33
  Speaker 1: two hours as if it were just coming. Missus Grose
• 4:39:37
  Speaker 1: looked hard through the window at the gray gathering day.
• 4:39:42
  Speaker 1: And did it come? No? Though I waited and waited,
• 4:39:48
  Speaker 1: I confess it didn't. And it was without a breach
• 4:39:51
  Speaker 1: of the silence, or so much as a faint allusion
• 4:39:54
  Speaker 1: to his sister's condition and absence, that we at last
• 4:39:58
  Speaker 1: kissed for good night. All the same, I continued, I
• 4:40:04
  Speaker 1: can't if her uncle sees her and sent to his
• 4:40:07
  Speaker 1: seeing her brother without my having given the boy, and
• 4:40:12
  Speaker 1: most of all, because things have got so bad a
• 4:40:15
  Speaker 1: little more time, my friend appeared on this ground, more
• 4:40:19
  Speaker 1: reluctant than I could quite understand. What do you mean
• 4:40:24
  Speaker 1: by more time? Well, a day or two really to
• 4:40:29
  Speaker 1: bring it out? He'll then be on my side, of
• 4:40:34
  Speaker 1: which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I shall
• 4:40:39
  Speaker 1: only fail, and you will, at the worst have helped
• 4:40:44
  Speaker 1: me by doing on your arrival in town whatever you
• 4:40:48
  Speaker 1: may have found possible. So I put it before her,
• 4:40:52
  Speaker 1: But she continued for a little, so inscrutably embarrassed that
• 4:40:56
  Speaker 1: I came again to her aid and less indeed, I
• 4:41:01
  Speaker 1: wound up. You really want not to go, I could
• 4:41:06
  Speaker 1: see it in her face. At last clear itself. She
• 4:41:09
  Speaker 1: put out her hand to me as a pledge. I'll go,
• 4:41:13
  Speaker 1: I'll go, I'll go. This morning, I wanted to be
• 4:41:17
  Speaker 1: very just if you should wish still to wait, I
• 4:41:22
  Speaker 1: would engage. She shouldn't see me. No, No, it's the
• 4:41:27
  Speaker 1: place itself. She must leave it. She held me a
• 4:41:31
  Speaker 1: moment with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. Your
• 4:41:36
  Speaker 1: idea is the right one, I myself, Miss well, I
• 4:41:42
  Speaker 1: can't stay the look she gave me with it made
• 4:41:47
  Speaker 1: me jump at possibilities. You mean that since yesterday you
• 4:41:53
  Speaker 1: have seen she shook her head with dignity I've heard
• 4:42:00
  Speaker 1: heard from that child horrors. There she sighed with tragic
• 4:42:08
  Speaker 1: relief on my honor. Miss, she says things. But at
• 4:42:15
  Speaker 1: this avocation she broke down. She dropped with a sudden
• 4:42:19
  Speaker 1: sob upon my sofa, and as I had seen her
• 4:42:23
  Speaker 1: do before, gave way to all the grief of it.
• 4:42:27
  Speaker 1: It was quite in another manner that I, for my part,
• 4:42:31
  Speaker 1: let myself go. Oh, thank god. She sprang up again
• 4:42:36
  Speaker 1: at this, drying her eyes with a groan. Thank god,
• 4:42:42
  Speaker 1: it so justifies me, It does that, Miss. I couldn't
• 4:42:48
  Speaker 1: have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. She's so horrible.
• 4:42:55
  Speaker 1: I saw my colleague Scarce knew how to put it
• 4:42:58
  Speaker 1: really shocking, and about me, about you, miss, since you
• 4:43:06
  Speaker 1: must have it. It's beyond everything for a young lady.
• 4:43:10
  Speaker 1: And I can't think wherever she must have picked up
• 4:43:13
  Speaker 1: the appalling language she applied to me. I can then
• 4:43:18
  Speaker 1: I'd broke in with a laugh that was doubtless significant enough.
• 4:43:22
  Speaker 1: It only in truth left my friend still more grave. Well,
• 4:43:28
  Speaker 1: perhaps I ought to also, since I've heard some of
• 4:43:31
  Speaker 1: it before, Yet I can't bear it. The poor woman
• 4:43:36
  Speaker 1: went on, while with the same movement she glanced on
• 4:43:40
  Speaker 1: my dressing table at the face of my watch. But
• 4:43:43
  Speaker 1: I must go back. I kept her, however, Ah, if
• 4:43:48
  Speaker 1: you can't bear it, how can I stop with her?
• 4:43:51
  Speaker 1: You mean, why, just for that? To get her away?
• 4:43:59
  Speaker 1: Far from this, she pursued, Far from them. She may
• 4:44:06
  Speaker 1: be different, she may be free. I seized her almost
• 4:44:11
  Speaker 1: with joy. Then, in spite of yesterday, you believe in
• 4:44:20
  Speaker 1: such doings? Her simple description of them required, in the
• 4:44:25
  Speaker 1: light of her expression, to be carried no further, And
• 4:44:29
  Speaker 1: she gave me the whole thing, as she had never done.
• 4:44:32
  Speaker 1: I believe, Yes, it was a joy, and we were
• 4:44:38
  Speaker 1: still shoulder to shoulder. If I might continue, sure of that,
• 4:44:43
  Speaker 1: I should care, But little what else happened, My support
• 4:44:46
  Speaker 1: in the presence of disaster would be the same as
• 4:44:49
  Speaker 1: it had been in my early need of confidence. And
• 4:44:53
  Speaker 1: if my friend would answer for my honesty, I would
• 4:44:56
  Speaker 1: answer for all the rest. On the point of taking
• 4:45:00
  Speaker 1: leave of her, none the less I was to some
• 4:45:03
  Speaker 1: extent embarrassed. There's one thing, of course. It occurs to
• 4:45:09
  Speaker 1: me to remember my letter giving the alarm will have
• 4:45:16
  Speaker 1: reached town before you. I now perceived still more how
• 4:45:20
  Speaker 1: she had been beating about the bush, and how weary
• 4:45:23
  Speaker 1: at last it had made her. Your letter won't have
• 4:45:27
  Speaker 1: got there, Your letter never went. What then became of it?
• 4:45:34
  Speaker 1: Goodness knows, Master Miles, do you mean he took it?
• 4:45:40
  Speaker 1: I gasped, She hung fire, But she overcame her reluctance.
• 4:45:46
  Speaker 1: I mean that I saw yesterday, when I came back
• 4:45:50
  Speaker 1: with Miss Flora, that it wasn't where you had put it.
• 4:45:55
  Speaker 1: Later in the evening I had the chance to question Luke,
• 4:45:58
  Speaker 1: and he declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it.
• 4:46:03
  Speaker 1: We could only exchange on this one of our deeper
• 4:46:06
  Speaker 1: mutual soundings, and it was missus Gross who first brought
• 4:46:10
  Speaker 1: up the plum with an almost elated you see, yes,
• 4:46:15
  Speaker 1: I see that if Myles took it instead, he probably
• 4:46:18
  Speaker 1: will have read it and destroyed it. And don't you
• 4:46:21
  Speaker 1: see anything else? I faced her a moment with a
• 4:46:25
  Speaker 1: sad smile. It strikes me that by this time your
• 4:46:29
  Speaker 1: eyes are open even wider than mine. They proved to
• 4:46:33
  Speaker 1: be so, indeed, but she could still blush almost to
• 4:46:38
  Speaker 1: show it. I make out now what he must have
• 4:46:41
  Speaker 1: done at school, and she gave, in her simple sharpness,
• 4:46:46
  Speaker 1: an almost droll disillusion nod. He stole I turned it over.
• 4:46:56
  Speaker 1: I tried to be more judicial. Well, perhap perhaps she
• 4:47:01
  Speaker 1: looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. He stole letters.
• 4:47:07
  Speaker 1: She couldn't know my reasons for a calmness, after all
• 4:47:11
  Speaker 1: pretty shallow, so I showed them off as I might.
• 4:47:15
  Speaker 1: I hope then it was to more purpose than in
• 4:47:17
  Speaker 1: this case. The note, at any rate that I put
• 4:47:22
  Speaker 1: on the table yesterday I pursued, will have given him
• 4:47:27
  Speaker 1: so scant an advantage, for it contained only the bare
• 4:47:31
  Speaker 1: demand for an interview, that he is already much ashamed
• 4:47:35
  Speaker 1: of having gone so far for so little, and that
• 4:47:38
  Speaker 1: what he had on his mind last evening was precisely
• 4:47:42
  Speaker 1: the need of confession. I seemed to myself for the
• 4:47:46
  Speaker 1: instant to have mastered it, to see it all leave us,
• 4:47:51
  Speaker 1: leave us. I was already at the door, hurrying her off.
• 4:47:57
  Speaker 1: I'll get it out of him, he'll meet me, he'll confess.
• 4:48:03
  Speaker 1: If he confesses, he saved, And if he saved, then
• 4:48:10
  Speaker 1: you are. The dear woman kissed me on this, and
• 4:48:15
  Speaker 1: I took her farewell. I'll save you without him, she
• 4:48:20
  Speaker 1: cried as she went end of chapter twenty one, Chapter
• 4:48:25
  Speaker 1: twenty two. Yet it was when she had got off
• 4:48:29
  Speaker 1: and I missed her on the spot that the great
• 4:48:32
  Speaker 1: pinch really came. If I had counted on what it
• 4:48:36
  Speaker 1: would give me to find myself alone with Miles, I
• 4:48:40
  Speaker 1: speedily perceived, at least, and that it would give me
• 4:48:44
  Speaker 1: a measure. No hour of my stay, in fact, was
• 4:48:49
  Speaker 1: so assailed with apprehensions as that of my coming down
• 4:48:54
  Speaker 1: to learn that the carriage containing Missus Gross and my
• 4:48:58
  Speaker 1: younger pupil had all already rolled out of the gates.
• 4:49:03
  Speaker 1: Now I was, I said to myself, face to face
• 4:49:08
  Speaker 1: with the elements. And for much of the rest of
• 4:49:11
  Speaker 1: the day, while I fought my weakness, I could consider
• 4:49:16
  Speaker 1: that I had been supremely rash. It was a tighter
• 4:49:19
  Speaker 1: place still than I had yet turned round in all
• 4:49:23
  Speaker 1: the more that for the first time I could see
• 4:49:27
  Speaker 1: in the aspect of others a confused reflection of the
• 4:49:31
  Speaker 1: crisis what had happened. Naturally caused them all to stare.
• 4:49:36
  Speaker 1: There was too little of the explained throw out whatever
• 4:49:40
  Speaker 1: we might in the suddenness of my colleagues act the
• 4:49:44
  Speaker 1: maids and the men looked blank, the effect of which
• 4:49:48
  Speaker 1: on my nerves was an aggravation, until I saw the
• 4:49:52
  Speaker 1: necessity of making it a positive aid. It was precisely,
• 4:49:57
  Speaker 1: in short, by just clutching the helm, that I avoided
• 4:50:02
  Speaker 1: total wreck. And I dare say that to beer up
• 4:50:06
  Speaker 1: at all, I became that morning very grand and very dry.
• 4:50:13
  Speaker 1: I welcomed the consciousness that I was charged with much
• 4:50:16
  Speaker 1: to do, and I caused it to be known as well,
• 4:50:20
  Speaker 1: that left thus to myself, I was quite remarkably firm.
• 4:50:27
  Speaker 1: I wandered with that manner for the next hour or
• 4:50:30
  Speaker 1: two all over the place, and looked, I have no
• 4:50:35
  Speaker 1: doubt as if I were ready for any onset. So
• 4:50:39
  Speaker 1: for the benefit of whom it might concern, I paraded
• 4:50:43
  Speaker 1: with a sick heart. The person it appeared least to
• 4:50:47
  Speaker 1: concern proved to be till dinner, little Miles himself. My
• 4:50:53
  Speaker 1: perambulations had given me meanwhile no glimpse of him, but
• 4:50:59
  Speaker 1: they had tended to make more public the change taking
• 4:51:03
  Speaker 1: place in our relation as a consequence of his having
• 4:51:07
  Speaker 1: at the piano the day before, kept me in Flora's interest.
• 4:51:14
  Speaker 1: So beguiled and befooled, the stamp of publicity had of
• 4:51:19
  Speaker 1: course been fully given by her confinement and departure, and
• 4:51:23
  Speaker 1: the change itself was now ushered in by our non
• 4:51:26
  Speaker 1: observance of the regular custom of the school room. He
• 4:51:30
  Speaker 1: had already disappeared when on my way down I pushed
• 4:51:35
  Speaker 1: open his door, and I learned below that he had
• 4:51:39
  Speaker 1: breakfasted in the presence of a couple of the maids,
• 4:51:43
  Speaker 1: with Missus Gross and his sister. He had then gone out,
• 4:51:50
  Speaker 1: as he said, for a stroll, than which nothing I
• 4:51:55
  Speaker 1: reflected could better have expressed his frank view of the
• 4:52:00
  Speaker 1: the abrupt transformation of my office. What he would not
• 4:52:04
  Speaker 1: permit this office to consist of was yet to be settled.
• 4:52:09
  Speaker 1: There was a queer relief at all events, I mean
• 4:52:13
  Speaker 1: for myself, an especial in the renouncement of one pretension.
• 4:52:19
  Speaker 1: If so much had sprung to the surface, I scarce
• 4:52:23
  Speaker 1: put it too strongly in saying that what had perhaps
• 4:52:26
  Speaker 1: sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging the fiction
• 4:52:31
  Speaker 1: that I had anything more to teach him. It sufficiently
• 4:52:34
  Speaker 1: stuck out that by tacit little tricks in which even
• 4:52:39
  Speaker 1: more than myself he carried out the care for my
• 4:52:42
  Speaker 1: dignity I had had to appeal to him to let
• 4:52:46
  Speaker 1: me off, straining to meet him on the ground of
• 4:52:49
  Speaker 1: his true capacity. He had, at any rate his freedom.
• 4:52:54
  Speaker 1: Now I was never to touch it again, as I
• 4:52:58
  Speaker 1: had amply shown. Moreover, when on his joining me in
• 4:53:04
  Speaker 1: the schoolroom the previous night, I had uttered on the
• 4:53:07
  Speaker 1: subject of the interval, just concluded neither challenge nor hint.
• 4:53:14
  Speaker 1: I had too much from this moment my other ideas. Yet,
• 4:53:20
  Speaker 1: when he at last arrived, the difficulty of applying them,
• 4:53:23
  Speaker 1: the accumulations of my problem were brought straight home to
• 4:53:28
  Speaker 1: me by the beautiful little presence on which what had
• 4:53:32
  Speaker 1: occurred had as yet for the eye dropped neither stain
• 4:53:38
  Speaker 1: nor shadow to mark for the house the high state
• 4:53:43
  Speaker 1: I cultivated. I decreed that my meals with the boy
• 4:53:46
  Speaker 1: should be served, as we called it, downstairs, so that
• 4:53:51
  Speaker 1: I had been awaiting him in the ponderous pomp of
• 4:53:54
  Speaker 1: the room, outside of the window of which I had
• 4:53:57
  Speaker 1: had from Missus Grosse at first scared Sunday my flash
• 4:54:03
  Speaker 1: of something it would scarce have done to call light
• 4:54:07
  Speaker 1: here at present I felt afresh, for I had felt
• 4:54:11
  Speaker 1: it again and again, how my equilibrium depended on the
• 4:54:15
  Speaker 1: success of my rigid will, Their will to shut my
• 4:54:19
  Speaker 1: eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what
• 4:54:22
  Speaker 1: I had to deal with was revoltingly against my nature.
• 4:54:28
  Speaker 1: I could only get on at all by taking nature
• 4:54:30
  Speaker 1: into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous
• 4:54:36
  Speaker 1: ordeal as a push in a direction, unusual, of course,
• 4:54:41
  Speaker 1: and unpleasant, but demanding after all for a fair front,
• 4:54:47
  Speaker 1: only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue.
• 4:54:54
  Speaker 1: No attempt none the less could well require more tact
• 4:54:59
  Speaker 1: than just this attackanpt to supply one's self all the nature.
• 4:55:05
  Speaker 1: How could I put even a little of that article
• 4:55:08
  Speaker 1: into a suppression of reference to what had occurred? How,
• 4:55:14
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, could I make reference without a
• 4:55:17
  Speaker 1: new plunge into the hideous obscure. Well, a sort of answer,
• 4:55:23
  Speaker 1: after a time had come to me, and it was
• 4:55:27
  Speaker 1: so far confirmed as that I was met incontestably by
• 4:55:33
  Speaker 1: the quickened vision of what was rare in my little companion.
• 4:55:37
  Speaker 1: It was indeed, as if he had found, even now,
• 4:55:41
  Speaker 1: as he had so often found, lessons still, some other
• 4:55:45
  Speaker 1: delicate way to ease me off. Wasn't there a light
• 4:55:49
  Speaker 1: in the fact which, as we shared our solitude, broke
• 4:55:54
  Speaker 1: out with a specious glitter. It had never yet quite
• 4:55:57
  Speaker 1: worn the fact that opportunity aiding precious opportunity which had
• 4:56:04
  Speaker 1: now come. It would be preposterous with a child so
• 4:56:10
  Speaker 1: endowed to forego the help one might rest from absolute intelligence.
• 4:56:17
  Speaker 1: What had his intelligence been given him for? But to
• 4:56:20
  Speaker 1: save him? Mightn't one to reach his mind risk the
• 4:56:27
  Speaker 1: stretch of an angular arm over his character. It was
• 4:56:32
  Speaker 1: as if, when we were face to face in the
• 4:56:35
  Speaker 1: dining room, he had literally shown me the way the
• 4:56:40
  Speaker 1: roast mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed
• 4:56:44
  Speaker 1: with attendance miles before he sat down, stood a moment
• 4:56:50
  Speaker 1: with his hands in his pockets, and looked at the
• 4:56:53
  Speaker 1: joint on which he seemed on the point of passing
• 4:56:57
  Speaker 1: some humorous judgment. But what he pressed produced was I say,
• 4:57:03
  Speaker 1: my dear, is she really very awfully ill? Little Flora?
• 4:57:10
  Speaker 1: Not so bad? But that she'll presently be better? London
• 4:57:14
  Speaker 1: will set her up. Bligh had ceased to agree with her.
• 4:57:18
  Speaker 1: Come here and take your mutton. He alertly obeyed me,
• 4:57:22
  Speaker 1: carried the plate carefully to his seat, and when he
• 4:57:26
  Speaker 1: was established, went on. Did lie disagree with her so
• 4:57:31
  Speaker 1: terribly suddenly? Not so suddenly as you might think one
• 4:57:36
  Speaker 1: had seen it coming on? Then, why didn't you get
• 4:57:41
  Speaker 1: her off before? Before? What? Before she became too ill
• 4:57:47
  Speaker 1: to travel? I found myself prompt. She is not too
• 4:57:53
  Speaker 1: ill to travel. She only might have become so if
• 4:57:56
  Speaker 1: she had stayed. This was just the moment to seize
• 4:58:00
  Speaker 1: the journey. Will dissipate the influence. O. I was grand,
• 4:58:05
  Speaker 1: and carry it off. I see, I see Miles, for
• 4:58:12
  Speaker 1: that matter was grand too. He settled to his repast
• 4:58:17
  Speaker 1: with the charming little table manner that from the day
• 4:58:20
  Speaker 1: of his arrival had relieved me of all grossness of admonition.
• 4:58:25
  Speaker 1: Whatever he had been driven from school for it was
• 4:58:28
  Speaker 1: not for ugly feeding. He was irreproachable as always to day,
• 4:58:35
  Speaker 1: but he was unmistakably more conscious. He was discernibly trying
• 4:58:39
  Speaker 1: to take for granted more things than he found without
• 4:58:44
  Speaker 1: assistance quite easy, and he dropped into peaceful silence while
• 4:58:50
  Speaker 1: he felt his situation. Our meal was of the briefest mine,
• 4:58:55
  Speaker 1: a vain pretense, and I had the things immediately removed.
• 4:59:00
  Speaker 1: While this was done, Myles stood again, with his hands
• 4:59:04
  Speaker 1: in his little pockets and his back to me, stood
• 4:59:08
  Speaker 1: and looked out of the wide window through which that
• 4:59:13
  Speaker 1: other day I had seen what pulled me up. We
• 4:59:18
  Speaker 1: continued silent while the maid was with us. As silent,
• 4:59:23
  Speaker 1: it whimsically occurred to me as some young couple who
• 4:59:28
  Speaker 1: on their wedding journey at the inn, feel shy in
• 4:59:31
  Speaker 1: the presence of the waiter. He turned round only when
• 4:59:35
  Speaker 1: the waiter had left us. Well, so we're alone. End
• 4:59:44
  Speaker 1: of chapter twenty two. Chapter twenty three, Oh more or less.
• 4:59:53
  Speaker 1: I fancy my spile was pale. Not absolutely, we shouldn't
• 4:59:58
  Speaker 1: like that, I went, No, I suppose we shouldn't. Of course,
• 5:00:06
  Speaker 1: we have the others. We have the others. We have.
• 5:00:11
  Speaker 1: Indeed the others, I concurred. Yet even though we have them.
• 5:00:18
  Speaker 1: He returned, still with his hands in his pockets, and
• 5:00:22
  Speaker 1: planted there in front of me. They don't much count,
• 5:00:25
  Speaker 1: do they. I made the best of it, but I
• 5:00:28
  Speaker 1: felt wane. It depends on what you call much. Yes,
• 5:00:34
  Speaker 1: with all accommodation, everything depends han this. However, he faced
• 5:00:41
  Speaker 1: to the window again and presently reached it with his vague, restless,
• 5:00:45
  Speaker 1: cogitating step. He remained there a while with his forehead
• 5:00:51
  Speaker 1: against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew,
• 5:00:55
  Speaker 1: and the dull things of November. I had always my
• 5:01:01
  Speaker 1: hypocrisy of work, behind which now I gained the sofa,
• 5:01:07
  Speaker 1: steadying myself with it there, as I had repeatedly done
• 5:01:11
  Speaker 1: at those moments of torment that I have described as
• 5:01:15
  Speaker 1: the moments of my knowing the children to be given
• 5:01:18
  Speaker 1: to something from which I was barred. I sufficiently obeyed
• 5:01:22
  Speaker 1: my habit of being prepared for the worst. But an
• 5:01:26
  Speaker 1: extraordinary impression dropped on me as I extracted a meaning
• 5:01:30
  Speaker 1: from the boy's embarrassed back, none other than the impression
• 5:01:35
  Speaker 1: that I was not barred. Now. This inference grew in
• 5:01:40
  Speaker 1: a few minutes to sharp intensity, and seemed bound up
• 5:01:44
  Speaker 1: with the direct perception that it was positively he who
• 5:01:48
  Speaker 1: was The frames and squares of the great window were
• 5:01:52
  Speaker 1: a kind of image for him, of a kind of failure.
• 5:01:57
  Speaker 1: I felt that I saw him, at any rate, shut
• 5:02:01
  Speaker 1: in or shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable.
• 5:02:08
  Speaker 1: I took it in with a throb of hope. Wasn't
• 5:02:11
  Speaker 1: he looking through the haunted pane for something he couldn't see?
• 5:02:18
  Speaker 1: And wasn't it the first time in the whole business
• 5:02:22
  Speaker 1: that he had known such a lapse? The first, the
• 5:02:26
  Speaker 1: very first I found it a splendid portent. It made
• 5:02:33
  Speaker 1: him anxious, though he watched himself. He had been anxious
• 5:02:38
  Speaker 1: all day, and even while in his usual sweet little
• 5:02:42
  Speaker 1: manner he sat at table, had needed all his small,
• 5:02:46
  Speaker 1: strange genius to give it a gloss. When he at
• 5:02:49
  Speaker 1: last turned round to meet me, it was almost as
• 5:02:53
  Speaker 1: if this genius had succumbed. Well, I think I'm glad
• 5:02:58
  Speaker 1: Blih agrees with me. You would certainly seem to have
• 5:03:02
  Speaker 1: seen these twenty four hours. Who could deal more of
• 5:03:05
  Speaker 1: it than for some time before, I hope, I went
• 5:03:10
  Speaker 1: on bravely, that you've been enjoying yourself. Oh yes, I've
• 5:03:17
  Speaker 1: been ever so far, all round about miles and miles away.
• 5:03:24
  Speaker 1: I've never been so free. He had really a manner
• 5:03:28
  Speaker 1: of his own, and I could only try to keep
• 5:03:31
  Speaker 1: up with him. Well do you like it? He stood there, smiling.
• 5:03:37
  Speaker 1: Then at last he put into two words, do you
• 5:03:41
  Speaker 1: more discrimination? Than I had ever heard two words contain
• 5:03:47
  Speaker 1: before I had time to deal with that. However, he continued,
• 5:03:52
  Speaker 1: as if with a sense that this was an impertinence
• 5:03:55
  Speaker 1: to be softened. Nothing could be more charming than the
• 5:03:59
  Speaker 1: way you take it. For of course, if we're alone
• 5:04:03
  Speaker 1: together now, it's you that are alone most. But I
• 5:04:09
  Speaker 1: hope he threw in you don't particularly mind having to
• 5:04:15
  Speaker 1: do with you, I asked, my dear child, how can
• 5:04:20
  Speaker 1: I help minding? Though I've renounced all claim to your company,
• 5:04:25
  Speaker 1: your so beyond me, I at least greatly enjoy it.
• 5:04:29
  Speaker 1: What else should I stay on for? He looked at
• 5:04:34
  Speaker 1: me more directly, and the expression of his face graver
• 5:04:38
  Speaker 1: now struck me as the most beautiful I had ever
• 5:04:43
  Speaker 1: found in it. You stay on just for that. Certainly,
• 5:04:50
  Speaker 1: I stay on as your friend, and from the tremendous
• 5:04:54
  Speaker 1: interest I take in you, do something can be done
• 5:04:57
  Speaker 1: for you that may be more worth your while that
• 5:05:02
  Speaker 1: needn't surprise you. My voice trembled so that I felt
• 5:05:07
  Speaker 1: it impossible to suppress the shake. Don't you remember how
• 5:05:12
  Speaker 1: I told you when I came and sat on your
• 5:05:16
  Speaker 1: bed the night of the storm, that there was nothing
• 5:05:20
  Speaker 1: in the world I wouldn't do for you. Yes, yes,
• 5:05:27
  Speaker 1: he on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had
• 5:05:32
  Speaker 1: a tone to master. But he was so much more
• 5:05:35
  Speaker 1: successful than I that, laughing out through his gravity, he
• 5:05:39
  Speaker 1: could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. Only that I think
• 5:05:44
  Speaker 1: with to get me to do something for you. It
• 5:05:47
  Speaker 1: was partly to get you to do something, I conceded,
• 5:05:51
  Speaker 1: But you know you didn't do it. Oh, yes, he said,
• 5:05:57
  Speaker 1: with the brightest superficial eagerness. You wanted me to tell
• 5:06:02
  Speaker 1: you something. That's it out, straight out what you have
• 5:06:10
  Speaker 1: on your mind.
• 5:06:10
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 5:06:12
  Speaker 1: Ah, then, is that what you've stayed over for? He
• 5:06:17
  Speaker 1: spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch
• 5:06:20
  Speaker 1: the finest little quiver of resentful passion. But I can't
• 5:06:25
  Speaker 1: begin to express the effect upon me of an implication
• 5:06:29
  Speaker 1: of surrender, even so faint. It was as if what
• 5:06:33
  Speaker 1: I had yearned for had come at last only to
• 5:06:39
  Speaker 1: astonish me. Well, yes, I may as well make a
• 5:06:44
  Speaker 1: clean breast of it. It was precisely for that he
• 5:06:48
  Speaker 1: waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose
• 5:06:51
  Speaker 1: of repudiating the assumption on which my action had been founded.
• 5:06:57
  Speaker 1: But what he finally said was, do you mean now here?
• 5:07:02
  Speaker 1: There couldn't be a better place or time. He looked
• 5:07:06
  Speaker 1: round him uneasily, and I had the rare, oh the queer,
• 5:07:11
  Speaker 1: impression of the very first symptom I had seen in him,
• 5:07:15
  Speaker 1: of the approach of immediate fear. It was as if
• 5:07:20
  Speaker 1: he were suddenly afraid of me, which struck me indeed
• 5:07:24
  Speaker 1: as perhaps the best thing to make him. Yet in
• 5:07:28
  Speaker 1: the very pang of the effort, I felt it vain
• 5:07:31
  Speaker 1: to try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant,
• 5:07:35
  Speaker 1: so gentle as to be almost grotesque, You want so
• 5:07:41
  Speaker 1: to go out again? Awfully? He smiled at me heroically,
• 5:07:48
  Speaker 1: and the touching little bravery of it was enhanced by
• 5:07:51
  Speaker 1: his actually flushing with pain. He had picked up his hat,
• 5:07:56
  Speaker 1: which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in
• 5:07:59
  Speaker 1: a way that gave me, even as I was just
• 5:08:03
  Speaker 1: nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of what I was doing.
• 5:08:09
  Speaker 1: To do it, in any way was an act of violence.
• 5:08:13
  Speaker 1: What did it consist of but the obtrusion of the
• 5:08:15
  Speaker 1: idea of grossness and guilt on a small, helpless creature
• 5:08:22
  Speaker 1: who had been for me a revelation of the possibilities
• 5:08:26
  Speaker 1: of beautiful intercourse. Wasn't it base to create for a
• 5:08:30
  Speaker 1: being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I suppose I
• 5:08:36
  Speaker 1: now read into our situation a clearness it couldn't have
• 5:08:40
  Speaker 1: had at the time, for I seemed to see our
• 5:08:42
  Speaker 1: poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a provision
• 5:08:48
  Speaker 1: of the anguish that was to come. So we circled
• 5:08:51
  Speaker 1: about with terrors and scruples, like fighters, not daring to close.
• 5:08:58
  Speaker 1: But it was for each other we feared that kept
• 5:09:01
  Speaker 1: us a little longer, suspended and unbruised. I'll tell you everything,
• 5:09:08
  Speaker 1: Myles said. I mean, I'll tell you anything you like.
• 5:09:13
  Speaker 1: You'll stay on with me and we shall both be
• 5:09:17
  Speaker 1: all right. And I will tell you I will, But
• 5:09:23
  Speaker 1: not now? Why not? Now? My insistence turned him from
• 5:09:28
  Speaker 1: me and kept him once more at his window, in
• 5:09:32
  Speaker 1: a silent stirring which between us you might have heard
• 5:09:36
  Speaker 1: a pin drop. Then he was before me again, with
• 5:09:40
  Speaker 1: the air of a person for whom outside, some one
• 5:09:44
  Speaker 1: who had frankly to be reckoned with, was waiting. I
• 5:09:48
  Speaker 1: have to see Luke. I had not yet reduced him
• 5:09:51
  Speaker 1: to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt proportionately ashamed,
• 5:09:57
  Speaker 1: but horrible, as it was his lies made up my truth.
• 5:10:03
  Speaker 1: I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. Well,
• 5:10:07
  Speaker 1: then go to Luke, and I'll wait for what you promise,
• 5:10:13
  Speaker 1: only in return for that satisfy before you leave me
• 5:10:19
  Speaker 1: one very much smaller request. He looked as if he
• 5:10:22
  Speaker 1: felt he had succeeded enough to be able still a
• 5:10:26
  Speaker 1: little to bargain, very much smaller. Yes, a mere fraction
• 5:10:33
  Speaker 1: of the whole. Tell me, Oh, my work preoccupied me,
• 5:10:39
  Speaker 1: and I was off hand if yesterday afternoon from the
• 5:10:45
  Speaker 1: table in the hall you took you know, my letter
• 5:10:53
  Speaker 1: end of chapter twenty three, Chapter twenty four. My sense
• 5:10:59
  Speaker 1: of how he received this suffered for a minute from
• 5:11:03
  Speaker 1: something that I can describe only as a fierce split
• 5:11:07
  Speaker 1: of my attention, a stroke that, at first, as I
• 5:11:12
  Speaker 1: sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind movement
• 5:11:17
  Speaker 1: of getting hold of him, drawing him close, And while
• 5:11:23
  Speaker 1: I just fell for support against the nearest piece of furniture,
• 5:11:27
  Speaker 1: instinctively keeping him with his back to the window. The
• 5:11:32
  Speaker 1: appearance was fell upon us that I had already had
• 5:11:35
  Speaker 1: to deal with here Peter quint had come into view,
• 5:11:40
  Speaker 1: like a sentinel before a prison. The next thing I
• 5:11:44
  Speaker 1: saw was that from outside he had reached the window.
• 5:11:49
  Speaker 1: And then I knew that close to the glass, and
• 5:11:53
  Speaker 1: glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room,
• 5:11:56
  Speaker 1: his white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what
• 5:12:01
  Speaker 1: took place within me at the sight to say that
• 5:12:04
  Speaker 1: on the second my decision was made. Yet I believed
• 5:12:07
  Speaker 1: that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time,
• 5:12:13
  Speaker 1: recovered her grasp of the act. It came to me,
• 5:12:17
  Speaker 1: in the very horror of the immediate presence, that the
• 5:12:21
  Speaker 1: whole act would be seeing and facing what I saw
• 5:12:26
  Speaker 1: and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration,
• 5:12:33
  Speaker 1: I can call it by no other name, was that
• 5:12:37
  Speaker 1: I felt, how voluntarily, how transcendently I might. It was
• 5:12:45
  Speaker 1: like fighting with a demon for a human soul. And
• 5:12:49
  Speaker 1: when I had fairly so appraised it, I saw how
• 5:12:52
  Speaker 1: the human soul, held out in the tremor of my
• 5:12:57
  Speaker 1: hands at arm's length, had a perfect dew of sweat
• 5:13:01
  Speaker 1: on a lovely, childish forehead. The face that was close
• 5:13:06
  Speaker 1: to mine was as white as the face against the glass,
• 5:13:11
  Speaker 1: and out of it presently came a sound, not low
• 5:13:16
  Speaker 1: nor weak, but as if from much further away, that
• 5:13:20
  Speaker 1: I drank like a waft of fragrance. Yes, I took
• 5:13:26
  Speaker 1: it at this with a moan of joy. I enfolded,
• 5:13:34
  Speaker 1: I drew him close, and while I held him to
• 5:13:38
  Speaker 1: my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever
• 5:13:41
  Speaker 1: of his little body, the tremendous pulse of his little heart.
• 5:13:46
  Speaker 1: I kept my eyes on the thing at the window,
• 5:13:50
  Speaker 1: and saw it move and shift its posture. I have
• 5:13:54
  Speaker 1: likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel for
• 5:13:59
  Speaker 1: a moment was rather the prowl of a baffled beast.
• 5:14:04
  Speaker 1: My present quickened courage, however, was such that not too
• 5:14:10
  Speaker 1: much to let it through. I had to shade as
• 5:14:14
  Speaker 1: it were my flame. Meanwhile, the glare of the face
• 5:14:18
  Speaker 1: was again at the window, the scoundrel fixed as if
• 5:14:22
  Speaker 1: to watch and wait. It was the very confidence that
• 5:14:26
  Speaker 1: I might now defy him, as well as the positive
• 5:14:30
  Speaker 1: certitude by this time of the child's unconsciousness, that made
• 5:14:36
  Speaker 1: me go, on, what did you take it for? Do
• 5:14:39
  Speaker 1: you see what you said about me? You open the letter?
• 5:14:44
  Speaker 1: I opened it. My eyes were now as I held
• 5:14:50
  Speaker 1: him off, a little again on Myles's own face, in
• 5:14:55
  Speaker 1: which the collapse of mockery showed me how complete was
• 5:14:59
  Speaker 1: the ravage of an easiness? What was prodigious? Or was that,
• 5:15:03
  Speaker 1: at last, by my success his sense was sealed and
• 5:15:08
  Speaker 1: his communication stopped. He knew that he was in presence,
• 5:15:14
  Speaker 1: but knew not of what, and knew still less that
• 5:15:18
  Speaker 1: I also was, and that I did know and what
• 5:15:24
  Speaker 1: did this strain of trouble matter? When my eyes went
• 5:15:27
  Speaker 1: back to the window only to see that the air
• 5:15:31
  Speaker 1: was clear again, and by my personal triumph the influence quenched.
• 5:15:40
  Speaker 1: There was nothing there. I felt that the cause was
• 5:15:44
  Speaker 1: mine and that I should surely get all And you
• 5:15:50
  Speaker 1: found nothing. I let my elation out. He gave the
• 5:15:55
  Speaker 1: most mournful, thoughtful little head shake. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, I
• 5:16:04
  Speaker 1: almost shouted in my joy. Nothing nothing, he sadly repeated.
• 5:16:13
  Speaker 1: I kissed his forehead. It was drenched. So what have
• 5:16:18
  Speaker 1: you done with it? I've burned it, burned it? It
• 5:16:26
  Speaker 1: was now or never? Is that what you did at school? Oh?
• 5:16:33
  Speaker 1: What this brought up? At school? Did you take letters
• 5:16:40
  Speaker 1: or other things? Other things? He appeared now to be
• 5:16:47
  Speaker 1: thinking of something far off, and that reached him only
• 5:16:51
  Speaker 1: through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it did reach him.
• 5:16:57
  Speaker 1: Did I steal? I felt my self reddened to the
• 5:17:01
  Speaker 1: roots of my hair, as well as wonder if it
• 5:17:04
  Speaker 1: were more strange to put to a gentleman such a question,
• 5:17:08
  Speaker 1: or to see him take it without allowances that gave
• 5:17:13
  Speaker 1: the very distance of his fall in the world? Was
• 5:17:16
  Speaker 1: it for that you mightn't go back? The only thing
• 5:17:20
  Speaker 1: he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. Did you
• 5:17:24
  Speaker 1: know I mightn't go back? I know everything he gave
• 5:17:30
  Speaker 1: me at this the longest and strangest look, everything, everything therefore,
• 5:17:40
  Speaker 1: did you? But I couldn't say it again? Miles could
• 5:17:46
  Speaker 1: very simply. No, I didn't steal my face must have
• 5:17:53
  Speaker 1: shown him, I believed him utterly, yet my hands. But
• 5:17:57
  Speaker 1: it was for pure tenderness him as if to ask
• 5:18:01
  Speaker 1: him why, if it was all for nothing, he had
• 5:18:04
  Speaker 1: condemned me to months of torment? What then did you do?
• 5:18:10
  Speaker 1: He looked in vague pain all round the top of
• 5:18:13
  Speaker 1: the room, and drew his breath two or three times over,
• 5:18:19
  Speaker 1: as if with difficulty he might have been standing at
• 5:18:22
  Speaker 1: the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to
• 5:18:25
  Speaker 1: some faint green twilight. Well, I said things, only that
• 5:18:36
  Speaker 1: they thought it was enough to turn you out. For
• 5:18:41
  Speaker 1: never truly had a person turned out shown so little
• 5:18:47
  Speaker 1: to explain it as this little person. He had appeared
• 5:18:50
  Speaker 1: to weigh my question, but in a manner quite detached
• 5:18:54
  Speaker 1: and almost helpless. Well, I suppose I oughtn't. But to
• 5:19:02
  Speaker 1: whom did you say them? He evidently tried to remember,
• 5:19:07
  Speaker 1: but it dropped. He had lost it I don't know.
• 5:19:13
  Speaker 1: He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender,
• 5:19:17
  Speaker 1: which was indeed, practically by this time so complete that
• 5:19:22
  Speaker 1: I ought to have left it there. But I was infatuated.
• 5:19:27
  Speaker 1: I was blind with victory. Though even then the very
• 5:19:31
  Speaker 1: effect that was to have brought him so much nearer
• 5:19:35
  Speaker 1: was already that of added separation. Was it to every one?
• 5:19:41
  Speaker 1: I asked, No, it was only two, but he gave
• 5:19:47
  Speaker 1: a sick little head shake. I don't remember their names?
• 5:19:52
  Speaker 1: Were they then? So many? No, only a few, though
• 5:20:00
  Speaker 1: I liked those he liked. I seemed to float not
• 5:20:05
  Speaker 1: into clearness, but into a darker obscure, And within a
• 5:20:10
  Speaker 1: minute there had come to me, out of my very pity,
• 5:20:15
  Speaker 1: the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was,
• 5:20:20
  Speaker 1: for the instant confounding and bottomless. For if he were innocent,
• 5:20:26
  Speaker 1: what then on earth was I paralyzed? While it lasted
• 5:20:32
  Speaker 1: by the mere brush of the question. I let him
• 5:20:36
  Speaker 1: go a little, so that with a deep drawn sigh,
• 5:20:41
  Speaker 1: he turned away from me again, which as he faced
• 5:20:45
  Speaker 1: toward the clear window, I suffered, feeling that I had
• 5:20:50
  Speaker 1: nothing now there to keep him from And did they
• 5:20:54
  Speaker 1: repeat what you said? I went on. After a moment,
• 5:21:00
  Speaker 1: he was at some distance from me, still breathing hard
• 5:21:03
  Speaker 1: and again with the air, though now without anger for
• 5:21:07
  Speaker 1: it of being confined against his will once more, as
• 5:21:13
  Speaker 1: he had done before. He looked up at the dim day,
• 5:21:18
  Speaker 1: as if of what had hitherto sustained him, nothing was
• 5:21:23
  Speaker 1: left but an unspeakable anxiety. Oh yes, he nevertheless replied.
• 5:21:32
  Speaker 1: They must have repeated them to those they liked. He added,
• 5:21:38
  Speaker 1: there was somehow less of it than I had expected,
• 5:21:43
  Speaker 1: But I turned it over, and these things came round
• 5:21:49
  Speaker 1: to the masters. Oh yes, he answered, very simply. But
• 5:21:55
  Speaker 1: I didn't know they'd tell the masters. They didn't. They've
• 5:22:01
  Speaker 1: never told. That's why I ask you. He turned to
• 5:22:05
  Speaker 1: me again, his little beautiful fevered face. Yes it was
• 5:22:10
  Speaker 1: too bad, Too bad, what I suppose, I sometimes said
• 5:22:17
  Speaker 1: to write home. I can't name the exquisite pathos of
• 5:22:22
  Speaker 1: the contradiction give in to such a speech by such
• 5:22:27
  Speaker 1: a speaker. I only know that the next instant I
• 5:22:31
  Speaker 1: heard myself throw off with homely force, stuff and nonsense.
• 5:22:36
  Speaker 1: And but the next after that I must have sounded
• 5:22:39
  Speaker 1: stern enough. What were these things? My sternness was all
• 5:22:45
  Speaker 1: for his judge. His executioner. Yet it made him avert
• 5:22:50
  Speaker 1: himself again, and that moment made me, with a single
• 5:22:55
  Speaker 1: bound and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him, for
• 5:23:00
  Speaker 1: there again against the glass, as if to blight his
• 5:23:05
  Speaker 1: confession and stay. His answer was the hideous author of
• 5:23:09
  Speaker 1: our woe, the white face of damnation. I felt a
• 5:23:15
  Speaker 1: sick whim at the drop of my victory and all
• 5:23:19
  Speaker 1: the return of my battle, so that the wildness of
• 5:23:23
  Speaker 1: my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. I
• 5:23:29
  Speaker 1: saw him, from the midst of my act meet it
• 5:23:33
  Speaker 1: with a divination, and on the perception that even now
• 5:23:37
  Speaker 1: he only guessed, and that the window was still to
• 5:23:41
  Speaker 1: his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame up
• 5:23:46
  Speaker 1: to convert the climax of his dismay into the very
• 5:23:49
  Speaker 1: proof of his liberation. No more, no more, no more,
• 5:23:56
  Speaker 1: I shrieked, as I tried to press him against me.
• 5:23:59
  Speaker 1: To my is she here? Myles panted, as he caught
• 5:24:04
  Speaker 1: with his sealed eyes the direction of my words. Then
• 5:24:07
  Speaker 1: as his strange she staggered me, and with a gasp
• 5:24:12
  Speaker 1: I echoed it, Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel. He, with a
• 5:24:17
  Speaker 1: sudden fury, gave me back. I seized stupefied, his supposition
• 5:24:23
  Speaker 1: sound sequel to what we had done to Flora. But
• 5:24:26
  Speaker 1: this made me only want to show him that it
• 5:24:29
  Speaker 1: was better still than that. It's not miss Jessel, but
• 5:24:33
  Speaker 1: it's at the window, straight before us. It's there, the
• 5:24:39
  Speaker 1: coward horror there for the last time, at this, After
• 5:24:45
  Speaker 1: a second in which his head made the movement of
• 5:24:49
  Speaker 1: a baffled dog's on a scent, and then gave a
• 5:24:52
  Speaker 1: frantic little shake for air and light, he was at
• 5:24:57
  Speaker 1: me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly over the place,
• 5:25:02
  Speaker 1: and missing wholly. Though it now, to my sense, filled
• 5:25:07
  Speaker 1: the room like the taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming presence,
• 5:25:14
  Speaker 1: it's he. I was so determined to have all my
• 5:25:19
  Speaker 1: proof that I flashed into ice to challenge him. Whom
• 5:25:23
  Speaker 1: do you mean by he, Peter Quin, you devil? His
• 5:25:27
  Speaker 1: face gave again round the room its convulsed supplication. Where
• 5:25:33
  Speaker 1: they are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of
• 5:25:38
  Speaker 1: the name, and his tribute to my devotion? What does
• 5:25:45
  Speaker 1: he matter now my own? What will he ever matter?
• 5:25:51
  Speaker 1: I have you, I launched at the beast, but he
• 5:25:55
  Speaker 1: has lost you forever. Then, for the demonstration of my
• 5:26:01
  Speaker 1: work there there, I said to Myles. But he had
• 5:26:08
  Speaker 1: already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and seen but
• 5:26:16
  Speaker 1: the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I
• 5:26:21
  Speaker 1: was so proud of, he uttered the cry of a
• 5:26:24
  Speaker 1: creature hurled over an abyss. And the grasp with which
• 5:26:29
  Speaker 1: I recovered him might have been that of catching him
• 5:26:33
  Speaker 1: in his fall. I caught him, Yes, I held him,
• 5:26:44
  Speaker 1: it may be imagined, with what a passion. But at
• 5:26:49
  Speaker 1: the end of a minute I began to feel what
• 5:26:52
  Speaker 1: it truly was that I held. We were alone with
• 5:26:59
  Speaker 1: the quiet day, and his little heart dispossessed, had stopped.
• 5:27:14
  Speaker 1: End of Chapter twenty four end of The Turn of
• 5:27:20
  Speaker 1: the Screw by Henry James