Grose took again, into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges of submission; then I pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a small refuge formed by one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation masked, for the hither side, by a projection of the bank and by a clump of trees growing close to the water. But if the boats there, where on earths she? my colleague anxiously asked. Thats exactly what we must learn. And I started to walk further. By going all the way round? Certainly, far as it is. It will take us but ten minutes, but its far enough to have made the child prefer not to walk. She went straight over. Laws! cried my friend again; the chain of my logic was ever too much for her. It dragged her at my heels even now, and when we had got halfway rounda devious, tiresome process, on ground much broken and by a path choked with overgrowthI paused to give her breath. I sustained her with a grateful arm, assuring her that she might hugely help me; and this started us afresh, so that in the course of but few minutes more we reached a point from which we found the boat to be where I had supposed it. It had been intentionally left as much as possible out of sight and was tied to one of the stakes of a fence that came, just there, down to the brink and that had been an assistance to disembarking. I recognized, as I looked at the pair of short, thick oars, quite safely drawn up, the prodigious character of the feat for a little girl; but I had lived, by this time, too long among wonders and had panted to too many livelier measures. There was a gate in the fence, through which we passed, and that brought us, after a trifling interval, more into the open. Then, There she is! we both exclaimed at once. Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled as if her performance was now complete. The next thing she did, however, was to stoop straight down and pluckquite as if it were all she was there fora big, ugly spray of withered fern. I instantly became sure she had just come out of the copse. She waited for us, not herself taking a step, and I was conscious of the rare solemnity with which we presently approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we met; but it was all done in a silence by this time flagrantly ominous. Mrs. Grose was the first to break the spell she threw herself on her knees and, drawing the child to her breast, clasped in a long embrace the little tender, yielding body. While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only watch itwhich I did the more intently when I saw Floras face peep at me over our companions shoulder. It was serious nowthe flicker had left it; but it strengthened the pang with which I at that moment envied Mrs. Grose the simplicity of her relation. Still, all this while, nothing more passed between us save that Flora had let her foolish fern again drop to the ground. What she and I had virtually said to each other was that pretexts were useless now. When Mrs. Grose finally got up she kept the childs hand, so that the two were still before me; and the singular reticence of our communion was even more marked in the frank look she launched me. Ill be hanged, it said, if Ill speak! It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder, was the first. She was struck with our bareheaded aspect. Why, where are your things? Where yours are, my dear! I promptly returned. She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to take this as an answer quite sufficient. And wheres Miles? she went on. There was something in the small valor of it that quite finished me these three words from her were, in a flash like the glitter of a drawn blade, the jostle of the cup that my hand, for weeks and weeks, had held high and full to the brim that now, even before speaking, I felt overflow in a deluge. Ill tell you if youll tell me I heard myself say, then heard the tremor in which it broke. Well, what? Mrs. Groses suspense blazed at me, but it was too late now, and I brought the thing out handsomely. Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel? XX Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon us. Much as I had made of the fact that this name had never once, between us, been sounded, the quick, smitten glare with which the childs face now received it fairly likened my breach of the silence to the smash of a pane of glass. It added to the interposing cry, as if to stay the blow, that Mrs. Grose, at the same instant, uttered over my violencethe shriek of a creature scared, or rather wounded, which, in turn, within a few seconds, was completed by a gasp of my own. I seized my colleagues arm. Shes there, shes there! Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she had stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having brought on a proof. She was there, and I was justified; she was there, and I was neither cruel nor mad. She was there for poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was there most for Flora; and no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps so extraordinary as that in which I consciously threw out to herwith the sense that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch and understand itan inarticulate message of gratitude. She rose erect on the spot my friend and I had lately quitted, and there was not, in all the long reach of her desire, an inch of her evil that fell short. This first vividness of vision and emotion were things of a few seconds, during which Mrs. Groses dazed blink across to where I pointed struck me as a sovereign sign that she too at last saw, just as it carried my own eyes precipitately to the child. The revelation then of the manner in which Flora was affected startled me, in truth, far more than it would have done to find her also merely agitated, for direct dismay was of course not what I had expected. Prepared and on her guard as our pursuit had actually made her, she would repress every betrayal; and I was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my first glimpse of the particular one for which I had not allowed. To see her, without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to glance in the direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, instead of that, turn at me an expression of hard, still gravity, an expression absolutely new and unprecedented and that appeared to read and accuse and judge methis was a stroke that somehow converted the little girl herself into the very presence that could make me quail. I quailed even though my certitude that she thoroughly saw was never greater than at that instant, and in the immediate need to defend myself I called it passionately to witness. Shes there, you little unhappy thingthere, there, there, and you see her as well as you see me! I had said shortly before to Mrs. Grose that she was not at these times a child, but an old, old woman, and that description of her could not have been more strikingly confirmed than in the way in which, for all answer to this, she simply showed me, without a concession, an admission, of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and deeper, of indeed suddenly quite fixed, reprobation. I was by this timeif I can put the whole thing at all togethermore appalled at what I may properly call her manner than at anything else, though it was simultaneously with this that I became aware of having Mrs. Grose also, and very formidably, to reckon with. My elder companion, the next moment, at any rate, blotted out everything but her own flushed face and her loud, shocked protest, a burst of high disapproval. What a dreadful turn, to be sure, miss! Where on earth do you see anything? I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she spoke the hideous plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted. It had already lasted a minute, and it lasted while I continued, seizing my colleague, quite thrusting her at it and presenting her to it, to insist with my pointing hand. You dont see her exactly as we see?you mean to say you dont nownow? Shes as big as a blazing fire! Only look, dearest woman, look! She looked, even as I did, and gave me, with her deep groan of negation, repulsion, compassionthe mixture with her pity of her relief at her exemptiona sense, touching to me even then, that she would have backed me up if she could. I might well have needed that, for with this hard blow of the proof that her eyes were hopelessly sealed I felt my own situation horribly crumble, I feltI sawmy livid predecessor press, from her position, on my defeat, and I was conscious, more than all, of what I should have from this instant to deal with in the astounding little attitude of Flora. Into this attitude Mrs. Grose immediately and violently entered, breaking, even while there pierced through my sense of ruin a prodigious private triumph, into breathless reassurance. She isnt there, little lady, and nobodys thereand you never see nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jesselwhen poor Miss Jessels dead and buried? We know, dont we, love?and she appealed, blundering in, to the child. Its all a mere mistake and a worry and a jokeand well go home as fast as we can! Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange, quick primness of propriety, and they were again, with Mrs. Grose on her feet, united, as it were, in pained opposition to me. Flora continued to fix me with her small mask of reprobation, and even at that minute I prayed God to forgive me for seeming to see that, as she stood there holding tight to our friends dress, her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly failed, had quite vanished. Ive said it alreadyshe was literally, she was hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. I dont know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never have. I think youre cruel. I dont like you! Then, after this deliverance, which might have been that of a vulgarly pert little girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose more closely and buried in her skirts the dreadful little face. In this position she produced an almost furious wail. Take me away, take me awayoh, take me away from her! From me? I panted. From youfrom you! she cried. Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed, while I had nothing to do but communicate again with the figure that, on the opposite bank, without a movement, as rigidly still as if catching, beyond the interval, our voices, was as vividly there for my disaster as it was not there for my service. The wretched child had spoken exactly as if she had got from some outside source each of her stabbing little words, and I could therefore, in the full despair of all I had to accept, but sadly shake my head at her. If I had ever doubted, all my doubt would at present have gone. Ive been living with the miserable truth, and now it has only too much closed round me. Of course Ive lost you Ive interfered, and youve seenunder her dictationwith which I faced, over the pool again, our infernal witnessthe easy and perfect way to meet it. Ive done my best, but Ive lost you. Goodbye. For Mrs. Grose I had an imperative, an almost frantic Go, go! before which, in infinite distress, but mutely possessed of the little girl and clearly convinced, in spite of her blindness, that something awful had occurred and some collapse engulfed us, she retreated, by the way we had come, as fast as she could move. Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no subsequent memory. I only knew that at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an hour, an odorous dampness and roughness, chilling and piercing my trouble, had made me understand that I must have thrown myself, on my face, on the ground and given way to a wildness of grief. I must have lain there long and cried and sobbed, for when I raised my head the day was almost done. I got up and looked a moment, through the twilight, at the gray pool and its blank, haunted edge, and then I took, back to the house, my dreary and difficult course. When I reached the gate in the fence the boat, to my surprise, was gone, so that I had a fresh reflection to make on Floras extraordinary command of the situation. She passed that night, by the most tacit, and I should add, were not the word so grotesque a false note, the happiest of arrangements, with Mrs. Grose. I saw neither of them on my return, but, on the other hand, as by an ambiguous compensation, I saw a great deal of Miles. I sawI can use no other phraseso much of him that it was as if it were more than it had ever been. No evening I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite of whichand in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had opened beneath my feetthere was literally, in the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness. On reaching the house I had never so much as looked for the boy; I had simply gone straight to my room to change what I was wearing and to take in, at a glance, much material testimony to Floras rupture. Her little belongings had all been removed. When later, by the schoolroom fire, I was served with tea by the usual maid, I indulged, on the article of my other pupil, in no inquiry whatever. He had his freedom nowhe might have it to the end! Well, he did have it; and it consistedin part at leastof his coming in at about eight oclock and sitting down with me in silence. 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; thenas if to share themcame 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 reentrance of Miss Jessel on the scene that she protestedit 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 childs sincerity as against my own. She persists in denying to you that she saw, or has ever seen, anything? My visitors trouble, truly, was great. Ah, miss, it isnt a matter on which I can push her! Yet it isnt either, I must say, as if I much needed to. It has made her, every inch of her, quite old. Oh, I see her perfectly from here. She resents, for all the world like some high little personage, the imputation on her truthfulness and, as it were, her respectability. Miss Jessel indeedshe! Ah, shes respectable, the chit! The impression she gave me there yesterday was, I assure you, the very strangest of all; it was quite beyond any of the others. I did put my foot in it! Shell never speak to me again. Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held Mrs. Grose briefly silent; then she granted my point with a frankness which, I made sure, had more behind it. I think indeed, miss, she never will. She do have a grand manner about it! And that mannerI summed it upis practically whats the matter with her now! Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitors face, and not a little else besides! She asks me every three minutes if I think youre coming in. I seeI see. I, too, on my side, had so much more than worked it out. Has she said to you since yesterdayexcept to repudiate her familiarity with anything so dreadfula single other word about Miss Jessel? Not one, miss. And of course you know, my friend added, I took it from her, by the lake, that, just then and there at least, there was nobody. Rather! And, naturally, you take it from her still. I dont contradict her. What else can I do? Nothing in the world! Youve the cleverest little person to deal with. Theyve made themtheir two friends, I meanstill cleverer even than nature did; for it was wondrous material to play on! Flora has now her grievance, and shell work it to the end. Yes, miss; but to what end? Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. Shell make me out to him the lowest creature! I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Groses face; she looked for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. And him who thinks so well of you! He has an odd wayit comes over me now, I laughed, of proving it! But that doesnt matter. What Flora wants, of course, is to get rid of me. My companion bravely concurred. Never again to so much as look at you. So that what youve come to me now for, I asked, is to speed me on my way? Before she had time to reply, however, I had her in check. Ive a better ideathe result of my reflections. My going would seem the right thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet that wont do. Its you who must go. You must take Flora. My visitor, at this, did speculate. But where in the world? Away from here. Away from them. Away, even most of all, now, from me. Straight to her uncle. Only to tell on you? No, not only! To leave me, in addition, with my remedy. She was still vague. And what is your remedy? Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miless. She looked at me hard. Do you think he? Wont, if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still to think it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his sister as soon as possible and leave me with him alone. I was amazed, myself, at the spirit I had still in reserve, and therefore perhaps a trifle the more disconcerted at the way in which, in spite of this fine example of it, she hesitated. Theres one thing, of course, I went on they mustnt, before she goes, see each other for three seconds. Then it came over me that, in spite of Floras presumable sequestration from the instant of her return from the pool, it might already be too late. Do you mean, I anxiously asked, that they have met? At this she quite flushed. Ah, miss, Im not such a fool as that! If Ive been obliged to leave her three or four times, it has been each time with one of the maids, and at present, though shes alone, shes locked in safe. And yetand yet! There were too many things. And yet what? Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman? Im not sure of anything but you. But I have, since last evening, a new hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I do believe thatpoor little exquisite wretch!he wants to speak. Last evening, in the firelight and the silence, he sat with me for two hours as if it were just coming. Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the gray, gathering day. And did it come? No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didnt, and it was without a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion to his sisters condition and absence that we at last kissed for good night. All the same, I continued, I cant, if her uncle sees her, consent to his seeing her brother without my having given the boyand most of all because things have got so bada little more time. My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I could quite understand. What do you mean by more time? Well, a day or tworeally to bring it out. Hell then be on my sideof which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I shall only fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by doing, on your arrival in town, whatever you may have found possible. So I put it before her, but she continued for a little so inscrutably embarrassed that I came again to her aid. Unless, indeed, I wound up, you really want not to go. I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; she put out her hand to me as a pledge. Ill goIll go. Ill go this morning. I wanted to be very just. If you should wish still to wait, I would engage she shouldnt see me. No, no its the place itself. She must leave it. She held me a moment with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. Your ideas the right one. I myself, miss Well? I cant stay. The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. You mean that, since yesterday, you have seen? She shook her head with dignity. Ive heard! Heard? From that childhorrors! There! she sighed with tragic relief. On my honor, miss, she says things! But at this evocation she broke down; she dropped, with a sudden sob, upon my sofa and, as I had seen her do before, gave way to all the grief of it. It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let myself go. Oh, thank God! She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a groan.  Thank God? It so justifies me! It does that, miss! I couldnt have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. Shes so horrible? I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. Really shocking. And about me? About you, misssince you must have it. Its beyond everything, for a young lady; and I cant think wherever she must have picked up The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then! I broke in with a laugh that was doubtless significant enough. It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. Well, perhaps I ought to alsosince Ive heard some of it before! Yet I cant bear it, the poor woman went on while, with the same movement, she glanced, on my dressing table, at the face of my watch. But I must go back. I kept her, however. Ah, if you cant bear it! How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just for that to get her away. Far from this, she pursued, far from them She may be different? She may be free? I seized her almost with joy. Then, in spite of yesterday, you believe In such doings? Her simple description of them required, in the light of her expression, to be carried no further, and she gave me the whole thing as she had never done. I believe. Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder if I might continue sure of that I should care but little what else happened. My support in the presence of disaster would be the same as it had been in my early need of confidence, and if my friend would answer for my honesty, I would answer for all the rest. On the point of taking leave of her, nonetheless, I was to some extent embarrassed. Theres one thing, of courseit occurs to meto remember. My letter, giving the alarm, will have reached town before you. I now perceived still more how she had been beating about the bush and how weary at last it had made her. Your letter wont have got there. Your letter never went. What then became of it? Goodness knows! Master Miles Do you mean he took it? I gasped. She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. I mean that I saw yesterday, when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasnt where you had put it. Later in the evening I had the chance to question Luke, and he declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it. We could only exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was Mrs. Grose who first brought up the plumb with an almost elated You see! Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he probably will have read it and destroyed it. And dont you see anything else? I faced her a moment with a sad smile. It strikes me that by this time your eyes are open even wider than mine. They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, almost, to show it. I make out now what he must have done at school. And she gave, in her simple sharpness, an almost droll disillusioned nod. He stole! I turned it overI tried to be more judicial. Wellperhaps. She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. He stole letters! She couldnt know my reasons for a calmness after all pretty shallow; so I showed them off as I might. I hope then it was to more purpose than in this case! The note, at any rate, that I put on the table yesterday, I pursued, will have given him so scant an advantagefor it contained only the bare demand for an interviewthat he is already much ashamed of having gone so far for so little, and that what he had on his mind last evening was precisely the need of confession. I seemed to myself, for the instant, to have mastered it, to see it all. Leave us, leave usI was already, at the door, hurrying her off. Ill get it out of him. Hell meet mehell confess. If he confesses, hes saved. And if hes saved Then you are? The dear woman kissed me on this, and I took her farewell. Ill save you without him! she cried as she went. XXII Yet it was when she had got offand I missed her on the spotthat 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 colleagues 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. It was precisely, in short, by just clutching the helm that I avoided total wreck; and I dare say that, to bear up at all, I became, that morning, very grand and very dry. I welcomed the consciousness that I was charged with much to do, and I caused it to be known as well that, left thus to myself, I was quite remarkably firm. I wandered with that manner, for the next hour or two, all over the place and looked, I have no doubt, as if I were ready for any onset. So, for the benefit of whom it might concern, I paraded with a sick heart. The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, till dinner, little Miles himself. My perambulations had given me, meanwhile, no glimpse of him, but they had tended to make more public the change taking place in our relation as a consequence of his having at the piano, the day before, kept me, in Floras interest, so beguiled and befooled. The stamp of publicity had of course been fully given by her confinement and departure, and the change itself was now ushered in by our nonobservance of the regular custom of the schoolroom. He had already disappeared when, on my way down, I pushed open his door, and I learned below that he had breakfastedin the presence of a couple of the maidswith Mrs. Grose and his sister. He had then gone out, as he said, for a stroll; than which nothing, I reflected, could better have expressed his frank view of the abrupt transformation of my office. What he would not permit this office to consist of was yet to be settled there was a queer relief, at all eventsI mean for myself in especialin the renouncement of one pretension. If so much had sprung to the surface, I scarce put it too strongly in saying that what had perhaps sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging the fiction that I had anything more to teach him. It sufficiently stuck out that, by tacit little tricks in which even more than myself he carried out the care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to let me off straining to meet him on the ground of his true capacity. He had at any rate his freedom now; I was never to touch it again; as I had amply shown, moreover, when, on his joining me in the schoolroom the previous night, I had uttered, on the subject of the interval just concluded, neither challenge nor hint. I had too much, from this moment, my other ideas. Yet when he at last arrived, the difficulty of applying them, the accumulations of my problem, were brought straight home to me by the beautiful little presence on which what had occurred had as yet, for the eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow. To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I decreed that my meals with the boy should be served, as we called it, downstairs; so that I had been awaiting him in the ponderous pomp of the room outside of the window of which I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first scared Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce have done to call light. Here at present I felt afreshfor I had felt it again and againhow my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature. I could only get on at all by taking nature into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue. No attempt, nonetheless, could well require more tact than just this attempt to supply, ones self, all the nature. How could I put even a little of that article into a suppression of reference to what had occurred? How, on the other hand, could I make reference without a new plunge into the hideous obscure? Well, a sort of answer, after a time, had come to me, and it was so far confirmed as that I was met, incontestably, by the quickened vision of what was rare in my little companion. It was indeed as if he had found even nowas he had so often found at lessonsstill some other delicate way to ease me off. Wasnt there light in the fact which, as we shared our solitude, broke out with a specious glitter it had never yet quite worn?the fact that (opportunity aiding, precious opportunity which had now come) it would be preposterous, with a child so endowed, to forego the help one might wrest from absolute intelligence? What had his intelligence been given him for but to save him? Mightnt one, to reach his mind, risk the stretch of an angular arm over his character? It was as if, when we were face to face in the dining room, he had literally shown me the way. The roast mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed with attendance. Miles, before he sat down, stood a moment with his hands in his pockets and looked at the joint, on which he seemed on the point of passing some humorous judgment. But what he presently produced was I say, my dear, is she really very awfully ill? Little Flora? Not so bad but that shell presently be better. London will set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her. Come here and take your mutton. He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to his seat, and, when he was established, went on. Did Bly disagree with her so terribly suddenly? Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming on. Then why didnt you get her off before? Before what? Before she became too ill to travel. I found myself prompt. Shes not too ill to travel she only might have become so if she had stayed. This was just the moment to seize. The journey will dissipate the influenceoh, I was grand!and carry it off. I see, I seeMiles, for that matter, was grand, too. He settled to his repast with the charming little table manner that, from the day of his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of admonition. Whatever he had been driven from school for, it was not for ugly feeding. He was irreproachable, as always, today; but he was unmistakably more conscious. He was discernibly trying to take for granted more things than he found, without assistance, quite easy; and he dropped into peaceful silence while he felt his situation. Our meal was of the briefestmine a vain pretense, and I had the things immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again with his hands in his little pockets and his back to mestood and looked out of the wide window through which, that other day, I had seen what pulled me up.


We continued silent while the maid was with usas silent, it whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned round only when the waiter had left us. Wellso were alone! XXIII Oh, more or less. I fancy my smile was pale. Not absolutely. We shouldnt like that! I went on. NoI suppose we shouldnt. Of course we have the others. We have the otherswe have indeed the others, I concurred. Yet even though we have them, he returned, still with his hands in his pockets and planted there in front of me, they dont much count, do they? I made the best of it, but I felt wan. It depends on what you call much! Yeswith all accommodationeverything depends! On this, however, he faced to the window again and presently reached it with his vague, restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile, with his forehead against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of work, behind which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with it there as I had repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I have described as the moments of my knowing the children to be given to something from which I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared for the worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I extracted a meaning from the boys embarrassed backnone other than the impression that I was not barred now. This inference grew in a few minutes to sharp intensity and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it was positively he who was. The frames and squares of the great window were a kind of image, for him, of a kind of failure. I felt that I saw him, at any rate, shut in or shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable I took it in with a throb of hope. Wasnt he looking, through the haunted pane, for something he couldnt see?and wasnt it the first time in the whole business that he had known such a lapse? The first, the very first I found it a splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he watched himself; he had been anxious all day and, even while in his usual sweet little manner he sat at table, had needed all his small strange genius to give it a gloss. When he at last turned round to meet me, it was almost as if this genius had succumbed. Well, I think Im glad Bly agrees with me! You would certainly seem to have seen, these twentyfour hours, a good deal more of it than for some time before. I hope, I went on bravely, that youve been enjoying yourself. Oh, yes, Ive been ever so far; all round aboutmiles and miles away. Ive never been so free. He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with him. Well, do you like it? He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two wordsDo you?more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain. Before I had time to deal with that, however, he continued as if with the sense that this was an impertinence to be softened. Nothing could be more charming than the way you take it, for of course if were alone together now its you that are alone most. But I hope, he threw in, you dont particularly mind! Having to do with you? I asked. My dear child, how can I help minding? Though Ive renounced all claim to your companyyoure so beyond meI at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay on for? He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. You stay on just for that? Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest I take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth your while. That neednt surprise you. My voice trembled so that I felt it impossible to suppress the shake. Dont you remember how I told you, when I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that there was nothing in the world I wouldnt do for you? Yes, yes! He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had a tone to master; but he was so much more successful than I that, laughing out through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. Only that, I think, was to get me to do something for you! It was partly to get you to do something, I conceded. But, you know, you didnt do it. Oh, yes, he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, you wanted me to tell you something. Thats it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you know. Ah, then, is that what youve stayed over for? He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the finest little quiver of resentful passion; but I cant begin to express the effect upon me of an implication of surrender even so faint. It was as if what I had yearned for had come at last only to astonish me. Well, yesI may as well make a clean breast of it, it was precisely for that. He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating the assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally said was Do you mean nowhere? There couldnt be a better place or time. He looked round him uneasily, and I had the rareoh, the queer!impression of the very first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of immediate fear. It was as if he were suddenly afraid of mewhich struck me indeed as perhaps the best thing to make him. Yet in the very pang of the effort I felt it vain to try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so gentle as to be almost grotesque. You want so to go out again? Awfully! He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little bravery of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. He had picked up his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in a way that gave me, even as I was just nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of what I was doing. To do it in any way was an act of violence, for what did it consist of but the obtrusion of the idea of grossness and guilt on a small helpless creature who had been for me a revelation of the possibilities of beautiful intercourse? Wasnt it base to create for a being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read into our situation a clearness it couldnt have had at the time, for I seem to see our poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a prevision of the anguish that was to come. So we circled about, with terrors and scruples, like fighters not daring to close. But it was for each other we feared! That kept us a little longer suspended and unbruised. Ill tell you everything, Miles saidI mean Ill tell you anything you like. Youll stay on with me, and we shall both be all right, and I will tell youI will. But not now. Why not now? My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more at his window in a silence during which, between us, you might have heard a pin drop. Then he was before me again with the air of a person for whom, outside, someone who had frankly to be reckoned with was waiting. I have to see Luke. I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made up my truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. Well, then, go to Luke, and Ill wait for what you promise. Only, in return for that, satisfy, before you leave me, one very much smaller request. He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still a little to bargain. Very much smaller? Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell meoh, my work preoccupied me, and I was offhand!if, yesterday afternoon, from the table in the hall, you took, you know, my letter. XXIV My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attentiona stroke that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind movement of getting hold of him, drawing him close, and, while I just fell for support against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively keeping him with his back to the window. The appearance was full upon us that I had already had to deal with here Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, from outside, he had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to the glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room his white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what took place within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made; yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time recovered her grasp of the act. It came to me in the very horror of the immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspirationI can call it by no other namewas that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, I might. It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human soulheld out, in the tremor of my hands, at arms lengthhad a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. The face that was close to mine was as white as the face against the glass, and out of it presently came a sound, not low nor weak, but as if from much further away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance. YesI took it. At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and while I held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever of his little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I kept my eyes on the thing at the window and saw it move and shift its posture. I have likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, for a moment, was rather the prowl of a baffled beast. My present quickened courage, however, was such that, not too much to let it through, I had to shade, as it were, my flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at the window, the scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the very confidence that I might now defy him, as well as the positive certitude, by this time, of the childs unconsciousness, that made me go on. What did you take it for? To see what you said about me. You opened the letter? I opened it. My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miless own face, in which the collapse of mockery showed me how complete was the ravage of uneasiness. What was prodigious was that at last, by my success, his sense was sealed and his communication stopped he knew that he was in presence, but knew not of what, and knew still less that I also was and that I did know. And what did this strain of trouble matter when my eyes went back to the window only to see that the air was clear again andby my personal triumphthe influence quenched? There was nothing there. I felt that the cause was mine and that I should surely get all. And you found nothing!I let my elation out. He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. Nothing. Nothing, nothing! I almost shouted in my joy. Nothing, nothing, he sadly repeated. I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. So what have you done with it? Ive burned it. Burned it? It was now or never. Is that what you did at school? Oh, what this brought up! At school? Did you take letters?or other things? Other things? He appeared now to be thinking of something far off and that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it did reach him. Did I steal? I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it were more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him take it with allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the world. Was it for that you mightnt go back? The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. Did you know I mightnt go back? I know everything. He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. Everything? Everything. Therefore did you? But I couldnt say it again. Miles could, very simply. No. I didnt steal. My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my handsbut it was for pure tendernessshook him as if to ask him why, if it was all for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment. What then did you do? He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have been standing at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some faint green twilight. WellI said things. Only that? They thought it was enough! To turn you out for? Never, truly, had a person turned out shown so little to explain it as this little person! He appeared to weigh my question, but in a manner quite detached and almost helpless. Well, I suppose I oughtnt. But to whom did you say them? He evidently tried to remember, but it droppedhe had lost it. I dont know! He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left it there. But I was infatuatedI was blind with victory, though even then the very effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was already that of added separation. Was it to everyone? I asked. No; it was only to But he gave a sick little headshake. I dont remember their names. Were they then so many? Noonly a few. Those I liked. Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, for if he were innocent, what then on earth was I? Paralyzed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of the question, I let him go a little, so that, with a deepdrawn sigh, he turned away from me again; which, as he faced toward the clear window, I suffered, feeling that I had nothing now there to keep him from. And did they repeat what you said? I went on after a moment. He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again with the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined against his will. Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the dim day as if, of what had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but an unspeakable anxiety. Oh, yes, he nevertheless repliedthey must have repeated them. To those they liked, he added. There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it over. And these things came round? To the masters? Oh, yes! he answered very simply. But I didnt know theyd tell. The masters? They didnttheyve never told. Thats why I ask you. He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. Yes, it was too bad. Too bad? What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home. I cant name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I heard myself throw off with homely force Stuff and nonsense! But the next after that I must have sounded stern enough. What were these things? My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him avert himself again, and that movement made me, with a single bound and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, against the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, was the hideous author of our woethe white face of damnation. I felt a sick swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my battle, so that the wildness of my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. I saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with a divination, and on the perception that even now he only guessed, and that the window was still to his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame up to convert the climax of his dismay into the very proof of his liberation. No more, no more, no more! I shrieked, as I tried to press him against me, to my visitant. Is she here? Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes the direction of my words. Then as his strange she staggered me and, with a gasp, I echoed it, Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel! he with a sudden fury gave me back. I seized, stupefied, his suppositionsome sequel to what we had done to Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was better still than that. Its not Miss Jessel! But its at the windowstraight before us. Its therethe coward horror, there for the last time! At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of a baffled dogs on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake for air and light, he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly over the place and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, filled the room like the taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming presence. Its he? I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to challenge him. Whom do you mean by he? Peter Quintyou devil! His face gave again, round the room, its convulsed supplication. Where? They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his tribute to my devotion. What does he matter now, my own?what will he ever matter? I have you, I launched at the beast, but he has lost you forever! Then, for the demonstration of my work, There, there! I said to Miles. But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall. I caught him, yes, I held himit may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped. Colophon The Turn of the Screw was published in 1898 by Henry James. 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Standard Ebooks is a volunteerdriven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org. Prologue The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as had gathered us for the occasionan appearance, of a dreadful kind, to a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up in the terror of it; waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to sleep again, but to encounter also, herself, before she had succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him. It was this observation that drew from Douglasnot immediately, but later in the eveninga reply that had the interesting consequence to which I call attention. Someone else told a story not particularly effective, which I saw he was not following. This I took for a sign that he had himself something to produce and that we should only have to wait. We waited in fact till two nights later; but that same evening, before we scattered, he brought out what was in his mind. I quite agreein regard to Griffins ghost, or whatever it wasthat its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, adds a particular touch. But its not the first occurrence of its charming kind that I know to have involved a child. If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children? We say, of course, somebody exclaimed, that they give two turns! Also that we want to hear about them. I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in his pockets. Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. Its quite too horrible. This, naturally, was declared by several voices to give the thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going on Its beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it. For sheer terror? I remember asking. He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little wincing grimace. For dreadfuldreadfulness! Oh, how delicious! cried one of the women. He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, he saw what he spoke of. For general uncanny ugliness and horror and pain. Well then, I said, just sit right down and begin. He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it an instant. Then as he faced us again I cant begin. I shall have to send to town. There was a unanimous groan at this, and much reproach; after which, in his preoccupied way, he explained. The storys written. Its in a locked drawerit has not been out for years. I could write to my man and enclose the key; he could send down the packet as he finds it. It was to me in particular that he appeared to propound thisappeared almost to appeal for aid not to hesitate. He had broken a thickness of ice, the formation of many a winter; had had his reasons for a long silence. The others resented postponement, but it was just his scruples that charmed me. I adjured him to write by the first post and to agree with us for an early hearing; then I asked him if the experience in question had been his own. To this his answer was prompt. Oh, thank God, no! And is the record yours? You took the thing down? Nothing but the impression. I took that herehe tapped his heart. Ive never lost it. Then your manuscript? Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand. He hung fire again. A womans. She has been dead these twenty years. She sent me the pages in question before she died. They were all listening now, and of course there was somebody to be arch, or at any rate to draw the inference. But if he put the inference by without a smile it was also without irritation. She was a most charming person, but she was ten years older than I. She was my sisters governess, he quietly said. She was the most agreeable woman Ive ever known in her position; she would have been worthy of any whatever. It was long ago, and this episode was long before. I was at Trinity, and I found her at home on my coming down the second summer. I was much there that yearit was a beautiful one; and we had, in her offhours, some strolls and talks in the gardentalks in which she struck me as awfully clever and nice. Oh yes; dont grin I liked her extremely and am glad to this day to think she liked me, too. If she hadnt she wouldnt have told me. She had never told anyone. It wasnt simply that she said so, but that I knew she hadnt. I was sure; I could see. Youll easily judge why when you hear. Because the thing had been such a scare? He continued to fix me. Youll easily judge, he repeated You will. I fixed him, too. I see. She was in love. He laughed for the first time. You are acute. Yes, she was in love. That is, she had been. That came outshe couldnt tell her story without its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but neither of us spoke of it. I remember the time and the placethe corner of the lawn, the shade of the great beeches and the long, hot summer afternoon. It wasnt a scene for a shudder; but oh! He quitted the fire and dropped back into his chair. Youll receive the packet Thursday morning? I inquired. Probably not till the second post. Well then; after dinner Youll all meet me here? He looked us round again. Isnt anybody going? It was almost the tone of hope. Everybody will stay! I willand I will! cried the ladies whose departure had been fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more light. Who was it she was in love with? The story will tell, I took upon myself to reply. Oh, I cant wait for the story! The story wont tell, said Douglas; not in any literal, vulgar way. Mores the pity, then. Thats the only way I ever understand. Wont you tell, Douglas? somebody else inquired. He sprang to his feet again. Yestomorrow. Now I must go to bed. Good night. And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left us slightly bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his step on the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. Well, if I dont know who she was in love with, I know who he was. She was ten years older, said her husband. Raison de plusat that age! But its rather nice, his long reticence. Forty years! Griffin put in. With this outbreak at last. The outbreak, I returned, will make a tremendous occasion of Thursday night; and everyone so agreed with me that, in the light of it, we lost all attention for everything else. The last story, however incomplete and like the mere opening of a serial, had been told; we handshook and candlestuck, as somebody said, and went to bed. I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by the first post, gone off to his London apartments; but in spite ofor perhaps just on account ofthe eventual diffusion of this knowledge we quite let him alone till after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, in fact, as might best accord with the kind of emotion on which our hopes were fixed. Then he became as communicative as we could desire and indeed gave us his best reason for being so. We had it from him again before the fire in the hall, as we had had our mild wonders of the previous night. It appeared that the narrative he had promised to read us really required for a proper intelligence a few words of prologue. Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it, that this narrative, from an exact transcript of my own made much later, is what I shall presently give. Poor Douglas, before his deathwhen it was in sightcommitted to me the manuscript that reached him on the third of these days and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began to read to our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth. The departing ladies who had said they would stay didnt, of course, thank heaven, stay they departed, in consequence of arrangements made, in a rage of curiosity, as they professed, produced by the touches with which he had already worked us up. But that only made his little final auditory more compact and select, kept it, round the hearth, subject to a common thrill. The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement took up the tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun. The fact to be in possession of was therefore that his old friend, the youngest of several daughters of a poor country parson, had, at the age of twenty, on taking service for the first time in the schoolroom, come up to London, in trepidation, to answer in person an advertisement that had already placed her in brief correspondence with the advertiser. This person proved, on her presenting herself, for judgment, at a house in Harley Street, that impressed her as vast and imposingthis prospective patron proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life, such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage. One could easily fix his type; it never, happily, dies out. He was handsome and bold and pleasant, offhand and gay and kind. He struck her, inevitably, as gallant and splendid, but what took her most of all and gave her the courage she afterward showed was that he put the whole thing to her as a kind of favor, an obligation he should gratefully incur. She conceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagantsaw him all in a glow of high fashion, of good looks, of expensive habits, of charming ways with women. He had for his own town residence a big house filled with the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase; but it was to his country home, an old family place in Essex, that he wished her immediately to proceed. He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, guardian to a small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger, a military brother, whom he had lost two years before. These children were, by the strangest of chances for a man in his positiona lone man without the right sort of experience or a grain of patiencevery heavily on his hands. It had all been a great worry and, on his own part doubtless, a series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor chicks and had done all he could; had in particular sent them down to his other house, the proper place for them being of course the country, and kept them there, from the first, with the best people he could find to look after them, parting even with his own servants to wait on them and going down himself, whenever he might, to see how they were doing. The awkward thing was that they had practically no other relations and that his own affairs took up all his time. He had put them in possession of Bly, which was healthy and secure, and had placed at the head of their little establishmentbut below stairs onlyan excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, whom he was sure his visitor would like and who had formerly been maid to his mother. She was now housekeeper and was also acting for the time as superintendent to the little girl, of whom, without children of her own, she was, by good luck, extremely fond. There were plenty of people to help, but of course the young lady who should go down as governess would be in supreme authority. She would also have, in holidays, to look after the small boy, who had been for a term at schoolyoung as he was to be sent, but what else could be done?and who, as the holidays were about to begin, would be back from one day to the other. There had been for the two children at first a young lady whom they had had the misfortune to lose. She had done for them quite beautifullyshe was a most respectable persontill her death, the great awkwardness of which had, precisely, left no alternative but the school for little Miles. Mrs. Grose, since then, in the way of manners and things, had done as she could for Flora; and there were, further, a cook, a housemaid, a dairywoman, an old pony, an old groom, and an old gardener, all likewise thoroughly respectable. So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a question.


And what did the former governess die of?of so much respectability? Our friends answer was prompt. That will come out. I dont anticipate. Excuse meI thought that was just what you are doing. In her successors place, I suggested, I should have wished to learn if the office brought with it Necessary danger to life? Douglas completed my thought. She did wish to learn, and she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow what she learned. Meanwhile, of course, the prospect struck her as slightly grim. She was young, untried, nervous it was a vision of serious duties and little company, of really great loneliness. She hesitatedtook a couple of days to consult and consider. But the salary offered much exceeded her modest measure, and on a second interview she faced the music, she engaged. And Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the benefit of the company, moved me to throw in The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the splendid young man. She succumbed to it. He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, gave a stir to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to us. She saw him only twice. Yes, but thats just the beauty of her passion. A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. It was the beauty of it. There were others, he went on, who hadnt succumbed. He told her frankly all his difficultythat for several applicants the conditions had been prohibitive. They were, somehow, simply afraid. It sounded dullit sounded strange; and all the more so because of his main condition. Which was? That she should never trouble himbut never, never neither appeal nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and let him alone. She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that when, for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking her for the sacrifice, she already felt rewarded. But was that all her reward? one of the ladies asked. She never saw him again. Oh! said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us again, was the only other word of importance contributed to the subject till, the next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, he opened the faded red cover of a thin oldfashioned giltedged album. The whole thing took indeed more nights than one, but on the first occasion the same lady put another question. What is your title? I havent one. Oh, I have! I said. But Douglas, without heeding me, had begun to read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering to the ear of the beauty of his authors hand. The Turn of the Screw By Henry James. Uncopyright May you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give. Copyright pages exist to tell you that you cant do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The United States public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the United States to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Copyright laws are different all over the world, and the source text or artwork in this ebook may still be copyrighted in other countries. If youre not located in the United States, you must check your local laws before using this ebook. Standard Ebooks makes no representations regarding the copyright status of the source text or artwork in this ebook in any country other than the United States. Nonauthorship activities performed on items that are in the public domainsocalled sweat of the brow workdont create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, the contributors to this ebook release their contributions under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work theyve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesnt change the copyright status of the source text or artwork. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much. Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Prologue I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV Colophon Uncopyright Landmarks The Turn of the Screw