readful
little face. In this position she produced an almost furious wail. "Take
me away, take me away--oh, take me away from HER!"

"From ME?" I panted.

"From you--from 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. I've been living with the miserable truth, and now
it has only too much closed round me. Of course I've lost you: I've
interfered, and you've seen--under HER dictation"--with which I faced,
over the pool again, our infernal witness--"the easy and perfect way to
meet it. I've done my best, but I've 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
Flora's 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 saw--I can use no