There were exactly states of the air,
conditions of sound and of stillness, unspeakable impressions
of the KIND of ministering moment, that brought back to me,
long enough to catch it, the feeling of the medium in which,
that June evening out of doors, I had had my first sight of Quint,
and in which, too, at those other instants, I had, after seeing him
through the window, looked for him in vain in the circle of shrubbery.
I recognized the signs, the portents--I recognized the moment, the spot.
But they remained unaccompanied and empty, and I continued unmolested;
if unmolested one could call a young woman whose sensibility had,
in the most extraordinary fashion, not declined but deepened.
I had said in my talk with Mrs. Grose on that horrid scene of Flora's
by the lake--and had perplexed her by so saying--that it would from
that moment distress me much more to lose my power than to keep it.
I had then expressed what was vividly in my mind: the truth that,
whether the children really saw or not--since, that is, it was
not yet definitely proved--I greatly preferred, as a safeguard,
the fullness of my own exposure. I was ready to know the very worst
that was to be known. What I had then had an ugly glimpse of was
that my eyes might be sealed just while theirs were most opened.
Well, my eyes WERE sealed, it appeared, at present--
a consummation for which it seemed blasphemous not to thank God.
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