"And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an angel now?"
"Yes, indeed--and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, how?
Well," I said in my torment, "you must put it to me again,
but I shall not be able to tell you for some days. Only, put it
to me again!" I cried in a way that made my friend stare.
"There are directions in which I must not for the present
let myself go." Meanwhile I returned to her first example--
the one to which she had just previously referred--
of the boy's happy capacity for an occasional slip.
"If Quint--on your remonstrance at the time you speak of--
was a base menial, one of the things Miles said to you,
I find myself guessing, was that you were another."
Again her admission was so adequate that I continued:
"And you forgave him that?"
"Wouldn't YOU?"
"Oh, yes!" And we exchanged there, in the stillness,
a sound of the oddest amusement. Then I went on:
"At all events, while he was with the man--"
"Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!"
It suited me, too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean
that it suited exactly the particularly deadly view I
was in the very act of forbidding myself to entertain.
But I so far succeeded in checking the expression of this view
that I will throw, just here, no further light on it than may be
offered by the mention of my final observation to Mrs.
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