passed at Bly, which, added up, made a formidable stretch.

The limit of this evil time had arrived only when, on the dawn of a
winter's morning, Peter Quint was found, by a laborer going to early work,

stone dead on the road from the village: a catastrophe explained--
superficially at least--by a visible wound to his head; such a wound

as might have been produced--and as, on the final evidence, HAD been--
by a fatal slip, in the dark and after leaving the public house,

on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path altogether, at the bottom of
which he lay. The icy slope, the turn mistaken at night and in liquor,

accounted for much--practically, in the end and after the inquest and
boundless chatter, for everything; but there had been matters in his life--

strange passages and perils, secret disorders, vices more than suspected--
that would have accounted for a good deal more.

I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be
a credible picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days

literally able to find a joy in the extraordinaryflight of
heroism the occasion demanded of me. I now saw that I had been

asked for a service admirable and difficult; and there would
be a greatness in letting it be seen--oh, in the right quarter!--

that I could succeed where many another girl might have failed.
It was an immense help to me--I confess I rather applaud myself

as I look back!--that I saw my service so strongly and so simply.
I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in

the world the most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal
of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit,

a deep, constant ache of one's own committed heart.
We were cut off, really, together; we were united in our danger.

They had nothing but me, and I--well, I had THEM. It
was in short a magnificent chance. This chance presented

itself to me in an image richly material. I was a screen--
I was to stand before them. The more I saw, the less they would.

I began to watch them in a stifled suspense, a disguised
excitement that might well, had it continued too long,

have turned to something like madness. What saved me,
as I now see, was that it turned to something else altogether.

It didn't last as suspense--it was superseded by horrible proofs.
Proofs, I say, yes--from the moment I really took hold.

This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened
to spend in the grounds with the younger of my pupils alone.

We had left Miles indoors, on the red cushion of a deep
window seat; he had wished to finish a book, and I had been

glad to encourage a purpose so laudable in a young man whose
only defect was an occasionalexcess of the restless.

His sister, on the contrary, had been alert to come out,
and I strolled with her half an hour, seeking the shade,

for the sun was still high and the day exceptionally warm.
I was aware afresh, with her, as we went, of how,

like her brother, she contrived--it was the charming thing
in both children--to let me alone without appearing to drop

me and to accompany me without appearing to surround.
They were never importunate and yet never listless.

My attention to them all really went to seeing them amuse
themselves immensely without me: this was a spectacle they seemed

actively to prepare and that engaged me as an active admirer.
I walked in a world of their invention--they had no occasion whatever

to draw upon mine; so that my time was taken only with being,
for them, some remarkable person or thing that the game of

the moment required and that was merely, thanks to my superior,
my exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished sinecure.

I forget what I was on the present occasion; I only remember
that I was something very important and very quiet and that Flora

was playing very hard. We were on the edge of the lake, and, as we
had lately begun geography, the lake was the Sea of Azof.

Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the
other side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator.

The way this knowledge gathered in me was the strangest thing
in the world--the strangest, that is, except the very much

stranger in which it quickly merged itself. I had sat down with
a piece of work--for I was something or other that could sit--

on the old stone bench which overlooked the pond; and in this
position I began to take in with certitude, and yet without

direct vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third person.
The old trees, the thick shrubbery, made a great and pleasant shade,

but it was all suffused with the brightness of the hot, still hour.
There was no ambiguity in anything; none whatever, at least,

in the conviction I from one moment to another found myself
forming as to what I should see straight before me and across

the lake as a consequence of raising my eyes. They were attached
at this juncture to the stitching in which I was engaged,

and I can feel once more the spasm of my effort not to move them
till I should so have steadied myself as to be able to make up

my mind what to do. There was an alien object in view--a figure
whose right of presence I instantly" target="_blank" title="ad.立即，立刻">instantly, passionately questioned.

I recollect counting over perfectly the possibilities,
reminding myself that nothing was more natural, for instance,

then the appearance of one of the men about the place, or even
of a messenger, a postman, or a tradesman's boy, from the village.

That reminder had as little effect on my practical
certitude as I was conscious--still even without looking--

of its having upon the character and attitude of our visitor.
Nothing was more natural than that these things should be

the other things that they absolutely were not.
Of the positiveidentity of the apparition I would assure myself

as soon as the small clock of my courage should have ticked out the
right second; meanwhile, with an effort that was already sharp enough,

I transferred my eyes straight to little Flora, who, at the moment,
was about ten yards away. My heart had stood still for an instant

with the wonder and terror of the question whether she too would see;
and I held my breath while I waited for what a cry from her, what some

sudden innocent sign either of interest or of alarm, would tell me.
I waited, but nothing came; then, in the first place--and there is

something more dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relate--
I was determined by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from her

had previously dropped; and, in the second, by the circumstance that,
also within the minute, she had, in her play, turned her back to the water.

This was her attitude when I at last looked at her--looked with the confirmed
conviction that we were still, together, under direct personal notice.

She had picked up a small flat piece of wood, which happened to have in it
a little hole that had evidently suggested to her the idea of sticking

in another fragment that might figure as a mast and make the thing a boat.
This second morsel, as I watched her, she was very markedly and intently

attempting to tighten in its place. My apprehension of what she was doing
sustained me so that after some seconds I felt I was ready for more.

Then I again shifted my eyes--I faced what I had to face.
VII

I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can
give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval.

Yet I still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms:
"They KNOW--it's too monstrous: they know, they know!"

"And what on earth--?" I felt her incredulity as she held me.
"Why, all that WE know--and heaven knows what else besides!"

Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only
now with full coherency even to myself. "Two hours ago, in the garden"--

I could scarce articulate--"Flora SAW!"
Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach.

"She has told you?" she panted.
"Not a word--that's the horror. She kept it to herself!

The child of eight, THAT child!" Unutterable still,
for me, was the stupefaction of it.

Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider.