It was my new suspicion that was intolerable;
and yet even to this complication the later hours of the day had brought
a little ease.
On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned
to my pupils, associating the right remedy for my dismay with
that sense of their charm which I had already found to be a thing
I could positively cultivate and which had never failed me yet.
I had simply, in other words, plunged afresh into Flora's
special society and there become aware--it was almost a luxury!--
that she could put her little conscious hand straight upon
the spot that ached. She had looked at me in sweet speculation
and then had accused me to my face of having "cried."
I had supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I
could literally--for the time, at all events--rejoice, under this
fathomless charity, that they had not entirely disappeared.
To gaze into the depths of blue of the child's eyes and pronounce
their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty
of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred
to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation.
I couldn't abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat
to Mrs. Grose--as I did there, over and over, in the small hours--
that with their voices in the air, their pressure on one's heart,
and their fragrant faces against one's cheek, everything fell
to the ground but their incapacity and their beauty.
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