"If you should so lose your head as to appeal to him for me--"
She was really frightened. "Yes, miss?"
"I would leave, on the spot, both him and you."
XIII
It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved
quite as much as ever an effort beyond my strength--offered,
in close quarters, difficulties as insurmountable as before.
This situation continued a month, and with new aggravations
and particular notes, the note above all, sharper and sharper,
of the small ironic consciousness on the part of my pupils.
It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, my mere
infernal imagination: it was absolutely traceable that they
were aware of my predicament and that this strange relation made,
in a manner, for a long time, the air in which we moved.
I don't mean that they had their tongues in their cheeks or did
anything vulgar, for that was not one of their dangers:
I do mean, on the other hand, that the element of the unnamed
and untouched became, between us, greater than any other,
and that so much avoidance could not have been so successfully
effected without a great deal of tacit arrangement.
It was as if, at moments, we were perpetually coming into sight
of subjects before which we must stop short, turning suddenly
out of alleys that we perceived to be blind, closing with a little
bang that made us look at each other--for, like all bangs,
it was something louder than we had intended--the doors we
had indiscreetly opened.
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