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Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange, quick primness of propriety, and they were again, with Mrs. Grose on her feet, united, as it were, in pained opposition to me. Flora continued to fix me with her small mask of reprobation, and even at that minute I prayed God to forgive me for seeming to see that, as she stood there holding tight to our friends dress, her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly failed, had quite vanished. Ive said it alreadyshe was literally, she was hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. I dont know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never have. I think youre cruel. I dont like you! Then, after this deliverance, which might have been that of a vulgarly pert little girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose more closely and buried in her skirts the dreadful little face. In this position she produced an almost furious wail. Take me away, take me awayoh, take me away from her! From me? I panted. From youfrom you! she cried. Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed, while I had nothing to do but communicate again with the figure that, on the opposite bank, without a movement, as rigidly still as if catching, beyond the interval, our voices, was as vividly there for my disaster as it was not there for my service. The wretched child had spoken exactly as if she had got from some outside source each of her stabbing little words, and I could therefore, in the full despair of all I had to accept, but sadly shake my head at her. If I had ever doubted, all my doubt would at present have gone. Ive been living with the miserable truth, and now it has only too much closed round me. Of course Ive lost you: Ive interfered, and youve seenunder her dictationwith which I faced, over the pool again, our infernal witnessthe easy and perfect way to meet it. Ive done my best, but Ive lost you. Goodbye. For Mrs. Grose I had an imperative, an almost frantic Go, go! before which, in infinite distress, but mutely possessed of the little girl and clearly convinced, in spite of her blindness, that something awful had occurred and some collapse engulfed us, she retreated, by the way we had come, as fast as she could move. Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no subsequent memory. I only knew that at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an hour, an odorous dampness and roughness, chilling and piercing my trouble, had made me understand that I must have thrown myself, on my face, on the ground and given way to a wildness of grief. I must have lain there long and cried and sobbed, for when I raised my head the day was almost done. I got up and looked a moment, through the twilight, at the gray pool and its blank, haunted edge, and then I took, back to the house, my dreary and difficult course. When I reached the gate in the fence the boat, to my surprise, was gone, so that I had a fresh reflection to make on Floras extraordinary command of the situation. She passed that night, by the most tacit, and I should add, were not the word so grotesque a false note, the happiest of arrangements, with Mrs. Grose. I saw neither of them on my return, but, on the other hand, as by an ambiguous compensation, I saw a great deal of Miles. I sawI can use no other phraseso much of him that it was as if it were more than it had ever been. No evening I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite of whichand in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had opened beneath my feetthere was literally, in the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness. On reaching the house I had never so much as looked for the boy; I had simply gone straight to my room to change what I was wearing and to take in, at a glance, much material testimony to Floras rupture. Her little belongings had all been removed. When later, by the schoolroom fire, I was served with tea by the usual maid, I indulged, on the article of my other pupil, in no inquiry whatever. He had his freedom nowhe might have it to the end! Well, he did have it; and it consistedin part at leastof his coming in at about eight oclock and sitting down with me in silence. On the removal of the tea things I had blown out the candles and drawn my chair closer: I was conscious of a mortal coldness and felt as if I should never again be warm. So, when he appeared, I was sitting in the glow with my thoughts. He paused a moment by the door as if to look at me; thenas if to share themcame to the other side of the hearth and sank into a chair. We sat there in absolute stillness; yet he wanted, I felt, to be with me. |
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