The Two Magics

d; so that when we met once more in the wonder of it we were of a common mind about the duty of resistance to extravagant fancies. We were to keep our

e disclosing, to the last detail, their special marks-a portrait on the exhibition of which she had instantly recognised and named them. She wished, of course,-small blame to her!-to sink the whole subject; and I was quick to assure her that my own interest in it had now violently taken the form of a search for the way to escape from it. I encountered

s and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation. I couldn't abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat to Mrs. Grose-as I did there, over and over, in the small hours-that with their voices in the air, their pressure on one's heart and their fragrant faces against one's cheek, everything fell to the ground but their incapacity and their beauty. It was a pity that, somehow, to settle this once for all, I had equally to re-enumerate the signs of subtlety that, in the afternoon, by the lake, had made a miracle of my show of self-possession. It was a pity to be obliged to re-investigate the certitude of the moment itself and

deal; but a small shifty spot on the wrong side of it all still sometimes brushed my brow like the wing of a bat; and I remember how on this occasion-for the sleeping house and the concentration alike of our danger and our watch seemed to help-I felt the importance of giving the last jerk to the curtain. "I don't believe anything so horrible," I recollect saying; "no, let us put it definitely, my dear, that I don't. But if I did, you know, there's a thing I should require now, just without sparing you the least bit more-oh, not a scrap, come!-to get out of you. What was it you had i

for a period of several months Quint and the boy had been perpetually together. It was in fact the very appropriate truth that she had ventured to criticise the propriety, to hint at the incongruity, of so close an alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a frank overt

this. "You reminded him that

it was his answer, for

" I waited. "He repeate

till impress upon me. "I was sure, at any rate," she ad

occa

-and a very grand one-and Miss Jessel only for the little lady. Whe

hadn't?" Her assent was clear enough to ca

matter; which indeed she backed up by a further remark. "You

he put that to you

d again. "No, he n

d her in connec

oming out. "Well, he didn't show anythin

o that you could see he knew wh

on't know!" the p

icacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable. But I

ouldn't p

ell, with vehemence, a-thinking, "what it shows that the

t nice now!" Mrs. Gros

" I persisted, "when I mentioned

ted with homely force. "And if he was so bad the

stare. "There are directions in which I must not for the present let myself go." Meanwhile I returned to her first example-the one to which she had just previously referred-of the boy's happy capacity for an occasional slip. "If Quint-

dn't

ess, a sound of the oddest amusement. Then I wen

ith the woman. It

the expression of this view that I will throw, just here, no further light on it than may be offered by the mention of my final observation to Mrs. Grose. "His having lied and been impudent are, I conf

d forgiven him than her anecdote struck me as presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for d

until further evidence, I now accuse nobody." Then, before shutting her out