"Ah, miss, YOU write!"
"Well--tonight," I at last answered; and on this we separated.
XVII
I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning.
The weather had changed back, a great wind was abroad,
and beneath the lamp, in my room, with Flora at peace beside me,
I sat for a long time before a blank sheet of paper and
listened to the lash of the rain and the batter of the gusts.
Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage
and listened a minute at Miles's door. What, under my
endless obsession, I had been impelled to listen for was some
betrayal of his not being at rest, and I presently caught one,
but not in the form I had expected. His voice tinkled out.
"I say, you there--come in." It was a gaiety in the gloom!
I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake,
but very much at his ease. "Well, what are YOU up to?"
he asked with a grace of sociability in which it occurred
to me that Mrs. Grose, had she been present, might have looked
in vain for proof that anything was "out."
I stood over him with my candle. "How did you know I was there?"
"Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise?
You're like a troop of cavalry!" he beautifully laughed.
"Then you weren't asleep?"
"Not much! I lie awake and think."
I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as he held
out his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the edge of his bed.
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