Scarce anything in the whole history seems to me so odd
as this fact that my real beginning of fear was one,
as I may say, with the instinct of sparing my companion.
On the spot, accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her
eyes on me, I, for a reason that I couldn't then have phrased,
achieved an inward resolution--offered a vague pretext
for my lateness and, with the plea of the beauty of the night
and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as soon as possible
to my room.
Here it was another affair; here, for many days after,
it was a queer affair enough. There were hours, from day
to day--or at least there were moments, snatched even from
clear duties--when I had to shut myself up to think.
It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than I could
bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so;
for the truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly,
the truth that I could arrive at no account whatever of
the visitor with whom I had been so inexplicably and yet,
as it seemed to me, so intimately concerned. It took little
time to see that I could sound without forms of inquiry
and without exciting remark any domestic complications.
The shock I had suffered must have sharpened all my senses;
I felt sure, at the end of three days and as the result
of mere closer attention, that I had not been practiced
upon by the servants nor made the object of any "game.
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