I used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I
thought strange things about them; and the circumstances that
these things only made them more interesting was not by itself
a direct aid to keeping them in the dark. I trembled lest they
should see that they WERE so immensely more interesting.
Putting things at the worst, at all events, as in meditation I
so often did, any clouding of their innocence could only be--
blameless and foredoomed as they were--a reason the more for
taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse,
I found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart.
As soon as I had done so I used to say to myself:
"What will they think of that? Doesn't it betray too much?"
It would have been easy to get into a sad, wild tangle about how
much I might betray; but the real account, I feel, of the hours
of peace that I could still enjoy was that the immediate
charm of my companions was a beguilement still effective
even under the shadow of the possibility that it was studied.
For if it occurred to me that I might occasionally excite
suspicion by the little outbreaks of my sharper passion for them,
so too I remember wondering if I mightn't see a queerness
in the traceable increase of their own demonstrations.
They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond
of me; which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a
graceful response in children perpetually bowed over and hugged.
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