It struck me that at this he just faintly colored. He gave, at any rate,

like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his head.
"I don't--I don't. I want to get away."

"You're tired of Bly?"
"Oh, no, I like Bly."

"Well, then--?"
"Oh, YOU know what a boy wants!"

I felt that I didn't know so well as Miles, and I took temporary refuge.
"You want to go to your uncle?"

Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the pillow.
"Ah, you can't get off with that!"

I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed color.
"My dear, I don't want to get off!"

"You can't, even if you do. You can't, you can't!"--
he lay beautifully staring. "My uncle must come down,

and you must completely settle things."
"If we do," I returned with some spirit, "you may be sure it

will be to take you quite away."
"Well, don't you understand that that's exactly what I'm working for?

You'll have to tell him--about the way you've let it all drop:
you'll have to tell him a tremendous lot!"

The exultation with which he uttered this helped
me somehow, for the instant, to meet him rather more.

"And how much will YOU, Miles, have to tell him?
There are things he'll ask you!"

He turned it over. "Very likely. But what things?"
"The things you've never told me. To make up his mind what to do with you.

He can't send you back--"
"Oh, I don't want to go back!" he broke in. "I want a new field."

He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable gaiety;
and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the poignancy,

the unnaturalchildishtragedy, of his probable reappearance at the end of
three months with all this bravado and still more dishonor. It overwhelmed me

now that I should never be able to bear that, and it made me let myself go.
I threw myself upon him and in the tenderness of my pity I embraced him.

"Dear little Miles, dear little Miles--!"
My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it

with indulgent good humor. "Well, old lady?"
"Is there nothing--nothing at all that you want to tell me?"

He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding
up his hand to look at as one had seen sick children look.

"I've told you--I told you this morning."
Oh, I was sorry for him! "That you just want me not to worry you?"

He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding him;
then ever so gently, "To let me alone," he replied.

There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made
me release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him.

God knows I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this,
to turn my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him.

"I've just begun a letter to your uncle," I said.
"Well, then, finish it!"

I waited a minute. "What happened before?"
He gazed up at me again. "Before what?"

"Before you came back. And before you went away."
For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes.

"What happened?"
It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me

that I caught for the very first time a small faint quaver
of consenting consciousness--it made me drop on my knees beside

the bed and seize once more the chance of possessing him.
"Dear little Miles, dear little Miles, if you KNEW how I

want to help you! It's only that, it's nothing but that,
and I'd rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong--

I'd rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles"--
oh, I brought it out now even if I SHOULD go too far--"I

just want you to help me to save you!" But I knew in a moment
after this that I had gone too far. The answer to my appeal

was instantaneous, but it came in the form of an extraordinary
blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and a shake of the room

as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in.
The boy gave a loud, high shriek, which, lost in the rest

of the shock of sound, might have seemed, indistinctly, though I
was so close to him, a note either of jubilation or of terror.

I jumped to my feet again and was conscious of darkness.
So for a moment we remained, while I stared about me and saw

that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window tight.
"Why, the candle's out!" I then cried.

"It was I who blew it, dear!" said Miles.
XVIII

The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me quietly:
"Have you written, miss?"

"Yes--I've written." But I didn't add--for the hour--that my letter,
sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would be time

enough to send it before the messenger should go to the village.
Meanwhile there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more brilliant,

more exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both had at heart
to gloss over any recent little friction. They performed the dizziest feats

of arithmetic, soaring quite out of MY feeble range, and perpetrated,
in higher spirits than ever, geographical and historical jokes.

It was conspicuous of course in Miles in particular that he appeared
to wish to show how easily he could let me down. This child, to my memory,

really lives in a setting of beauty and misery that no words can translate;
there was a distinction all his own in every impulse he revealed;

never was a small natural creature, to the uninitiated eye all frankness
and freedom, a more ingenious, a more extraordinary little gentleman.

I had perpetually to guard against the wonder of contemplation into which my
initiated view betrayed me; to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged

sigh in which I constantly both attacked and renounced the enigma of
what such a little gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty.

Say that, by the dark prodigy I knew, the imagination of all evil HAD
been opened up to him: all the justice within me ached for the proof

that it could ever have flowered into an act.
He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman

as when, after our early dinner on this dreadful day,
he came round to me and asked if I shouldn't like him,

for half an hour, to play to me. David playing to Saul
could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion.

It was literally a charmingexhibition of tact, of magnanimity,
and quite tantamount to his saying outright: "The true knights

we love to read about never push an advantage too far.
I know what you mean now: you mean that--to be let alone yourself

and not followed up--you'll cease to worry and spy upon me,
won't keep me so close to you, will let me go and come.

Well, I `come,' you see--but I don't go! There'll be plenty
of time for that. I do really delight in your society,

and I only want to show you that I contended for a principle."
It may be imagined whether I resisted this appeal or failed

to accompany him again, hand in hand, to the schoolroom.
He sat down at the old piano and played as he had never played;

and if there are those who think he had better have been kicking
a football I can only say that I wholly agree with them.

For at the end of a time that under his influence I had
quite ceased to measure, I started up with a strange sense

of having literally slept at my post. It was after luncheon,
and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I hadn't really,

in the least, slept: I had only done something much worse--
I had forgotten. Where, all this time, was Flora?

When I put the question to Miles, he played on a minute
before answering and then could only say: "Why, my dear,

how do _I_ know?"--breaking moreover into a happy laugh which,
immediately after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment,

he prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song.
I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there;