Grose could join me.
Perfectly can I recall now the particular way strength came to me
before we separated for the night. We had gone over and over every
feature of what I had seen.
"He was looking for someone else, you say--someone who was not you?"
"He was looking for little Miles." A portentous clearness now possessed me.
"THAT'S whom he was looking for."
"But how do you know?"
"I know, I know, I know!" My exaltation grew. "And YOU know, my dear!"
She didn't deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much
telling as that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate:
"What if HE should see him?"
"Little Miles? That's what he wants!"
She looked immensely scared again. "The child?"
"Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to THEM."
That he might was an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could
keep it at bay; which, moreover, as we lingered there,
was what I succeeded in practically proving. I had an absolute
certainty that I should see again what I had already seen,
but something within me said that by offering myself bravely
as the sole subject of such experience, by accepting, by inviting,
by surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory victim
and guard the tranquility of my companions. The children,
in especial, I should thus fence about and absolutely save.
I recall one of the last things I said that night to Mrs.
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