On the removal of the tea things I had blown out the candles
and drawn my chair closer: I was conscious of a mortal coldness
and felt as if I should never again be warm. So, when he appeared,
I was sitting in the glow with my thoughts. He paused a moment
by the door as if to look at me; then--as if to share them--
came to the other side of the hearth and sank into a chair.
We sat there in absolute stillness; yet he wanted, I felt,
to be with me.
XXI
Before a new day, in my room, had fully broken, my eyes opened
to Mrs. Grose, who had come to my bedside with worse news.
Flora was so markedly feverish that an illness was perhaps at hand;
she had passed a night of extreme unrest, a night agitated above
all by fears that had for their subject not in the least her former,
but wholly her present, governess. It was not against the possible
re-entrance of Miss Jessel on the scene that she protested--
it was conspicuously and passionately against mine. I was promptly
on my feet of course, and with an immense deal to ask; the more that my
friend had discernibly now girded her loins to meet me once more.
This I felt as soon as I had put to her the question of her sense
of the child's sincerity as against my own. "She persists in denying
to you that she saw, or has ever seen, anything?"
My visitor's trouble, truly, was great.
Pages:
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152