" I seemed to myself,
for the instant, to have mastered it, to see it all.
"Leave us, leave us"--I was already, at the door, hurrying her off.
"I'll get it out of him. He'll meet me--he'll confess.
If he confesses, he's saved. And if he's saved--"
"Then YOU are?" The dear woman kissed me on this,
and I took her farewell. "I'll save you without him!"
she cried as she went.
XXII
Yet it was when she had got off--and I missed her on the spot--
that the great pinch really came. If I had counted on
what it would give me to find myself alone with Miles,
I speedily perceived, at least, that it would give me a measure.
No hour of my stay in fact was so assailed with apprehensions
as that of my coming down to learn that the carriage containing
Mrs. Grose and my younger pupil had already rolled out of the gates.
Now I WAS, I said to myself, face to face with the elements,
and for much of the rest of the day, while I fought
my weakness, I could consider that I had been supremely rash.
It was a tighter place still than I had yet turned round in;
all the more that, for the first time, I could see in
the aspect of others a confused reflection of the crisis.
What had happened naturally caused them all to stare;
there was too little of the explained, throw out whatever we might,
in the suddenness of my colleague's act. The maids and the men
looked blank; the effect of which on my nerves was an aggravation
until I saw the necessity of making it a positive aid.
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