NAXOS

Henry James

The Turn
YOUNG

of the Screw
A D U LT
CLASSICS

A S T U D Y G U I D E
by Francis Gilbert
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Contents
introduction ............................................... 5
contexts ....................................................... 7
Understanding Contexts ................................................... 7
Contexts of Writing: Henry James’s Life ......................... 8
Selected Reading on Henry James’s Life .......................... 11
Contexts of Reading .......................................................... 12

structure and theme .................................. 15

The Influence of Genre – the Role of the Gothic ............ 18

critical perspectives .................................. 21

The Unreliable Narrator in The Turn of the Screw.............. 21
Selected Reading on The Turn of the Screw ....................... 23

notes, quotes and discussion .................... 25

glossary ....................................................... 75
study guide author: francis gilbert ......... 77

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Introduction
This study guide takes a different approach from most
study guides. It does not simply tell you more about the
story and characters, which isn’t actually that useful.
Instead, it attempts to show how the author’s techniques
and interests inform every single facet of this classic
novella. Most study guides simply tell you what is going
on, then tack on bits at the end which tell you how the
author creates suspense and drama at certain points in the
book, informing you a little about why the author might
have done this.

This study guide begins with the how and the why ,
showing you right from the start how and why the author
shaped the key elements of the book.

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Contexts
Understanding Contexts
In order to fully appreciate a text, you need to appreciate
the contexts in which it was written – known as its
contexts of writing – and the contexts in which you read
the book, or the contexts of reading.

This is potentially a huge area to explore because ‘contexts’

essentially means the ‘worlds’ from which the book has
arisen. For the best books, these are many and various.
The most obvious starting point is the writer’s own life: it
is worth thinking about how and why the events in a
writer’s life might have influenced his or her fiction.
However, you do have to be careful not to assume too
much. For example, although the central character in this
novella, the governess, bears some resemblance to Henry
James’s dead friend Minny Temple and also to his sister
Alice, you must remember that the governess is a
character in her own right in the novella – a vital cog in
the narrative wheel, a literary construct and no t a real
person !
As a result, it is particularly fruitful to explore other
contexts of writing. We can look at the broader world from
which Henry James arose (Victorian society and its
particular set of values; also the American and European
culture of the time), and consider carefully how, in his
writing, he both adopted and rejected the morals of his
time. Other contexts might be the influence of the literary
world that Henry James inhabited (what other authors
were writing at the time), how religion shaped his views,
and so on.
Just as important as the contexts of writing are the

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contexts of reading: how we read the text today. Central toThe influenced his writing a great deal. At this time he was also
Turn of the Screw is the question of whether we believe in writing poems and translating the work of French authors.
ghosts or not: this novella leaves room for the reader to doubt In 1861 disaster nearly struck when Henry was injured
the existence of the ghosts. Your own personal context is very while helping to put out a fire, an event which he would
important too. If you strongly believe in ghosts, then you will describe as ‘a horrid and obscure hurt’. Meanwhile his
read the book very differently from someone who does not. In brothers Wilky and Robertson fought on the Union side in
order for you to consider fully the contexts of reading rather the Civil War. William attended Lawrence Scientific School
than my telling you what to think, I have posed open-ended at Harvard. Feeling a failure at art, Henry studied for a
questions in the ‘Notes, Quotes and Discussion’ section. year at Harvard Law school, another venture which failed
to bring him much success. In 1864 , with the family
uprooting to Boston and William now at Harvard Medical
School, Henry began to forge a literary career: his first
Contexts of Writing: Henry James’s Life short story was published anonymously in the Continental
Monthly. More success followed in 1865 , when James was
Henry James, born on 15 April 1843 at 21 Washington published under his own name in the Atlantic Monthly. In
Place, New York City, was the second son of the 1 8 6 6 the family moved yet again to Cambridge,
independently wealthy Henry and Mary James. His elder Massachusetts. Henry lived at home and continued
brother William had been born the year before. Almost writing, but in 1869 went to Europe, travelling in England,
immediately their restless and intellectual father, Henry France, Switzerland and Italy. In 1870 he learned of the
James Senior, set about travelling to give his children the death of his cousin Minny Temple, to whom he had been
best education possible. The family visited Europe, staying very close: it appears that Minny was the model for many
in France and England, but returned to the us in 1845 to of his heroines. She was a highly intense, thoughtful
live in Albany in New York State. Following the birth of woman who appears to have been as neurotic as the
two more sons, they moved to New York City, where a governess in The Turn of the Screw. He returned to the US
daughter Alice was born in 1848 . This was perhaps the where his first novel Watch and Ward was published, but
most settled period of Henry James’s childhood, with the after that he was on his travels again, writing articles
family staying in New York for seven years. In 1855 they about his voyages in Europe.
were off on their travels again. Henry James Snr was Henry James was becoming increasingly successful as a
becoming obsessed with giving his children the very best, writer. He decided to settle in Paris, the cultural capital of
and the children had a succession of private tutors when the world at the time, and was appointed correspondent
they stayed in England, France and Switzerland. In 1858 , for the New York Tribune: a prestigious position. Adding to
on return to America, the family took up residence in his success, his new novel Roderick Hudson was published
Newport, Rhode Island. They were in Europe in 1859 , with to favourable reviews. It was the beginning of a wonderful
Henry attending schools in Geneva and Bonn, but in 1860 time for James: he met the great writers of the era and
they returned to Newport. Henry and his fiercely hob-nobbed with the great and the good in England and in
intelligent brother William studied art, and although France, many of whom became personal friends. The great
Henry was a very poor artist the training gave him an realist writers of the 19 th century such as Turgenev,
interest in visual design and layout which subsequently Flaubert and Zola were all close acquaintances. In

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December 187 6 James moved to London, taking rooms in

Bolton Street, Piccadilly. His life in Europe was full of Selected Reading on Henry James’s Life
industry and socialising. In 1881 he published his most
famous novels, Washington Square and The Portrait of a Harry T. Moore
Lady. Returning to the US in 1882 , he continued working Henry James and his World
(Thames and Hudson; 1974)
but suffered a loss when his parents died within a short
space of each other. The following year he returned to A concise, marvellously readable and fascinating biography of
Henry James, complete with fascinating photographs and
England, continuing to write as well as trying to care for pictures which truly illuminate James’s world.
his demanding, sick sister, Alice. In 1885 he moved Alice
to Bournemouth where the stricken Robert Louis Leon Edel
Stevenson was staying. The two writers quickly became Henry James – A Life
friends; it was a friendship that was to prove fruitful for (Harper Collins; 1987)
James, because he was influenced by Stevenson’s ability to This is the definitive biography of James. Twenty years in the
breathe new life into the tired genre of the Gothic. writing, it was first published in five volumes. This is the one-
volume version, which is much condensed but still hugely
From the mid-1880 s James continued working on some readable.
very ambitious projects: long novels, criticism, travel
writing and short stories, but he did not replicate his early
success at this point. To make matters worse, his sister
died in 1892 and, in 1895 , the production of his play Guy The story has its origin in a ghost story which was
Domville was an unmitigated disaster. Terribly wounded by recounted by the Archbishop of Canterbury at a country
the criticism he received, James felt he had to leave house. James’s notebook reveals how he sketched out the
London. After this failure he wrote (in the form of a story; before writing he had many of the elements in place,
dialogue with himself): ‘I have my head, thank God, full of such as the idea of the children having been in the care of
visions. One has never too many – one has never enough. servants who die in very mysterious circumstances and
Ah, just to let one’s self go – at last: to surrender one’s self then reappear dramatically. The ghostly reappearance of
to what through the long years one has (quite ironically, I the servants is what drives much of the controversy
think) hoped for and waited for…’ surrounding James’s story; some people do not believe The
The above comment does not mean that he literally had Turn of the Screw to be a ghost story, despite the fact that
visions, but it is telling nevertheless. His response to this James called it one. Some critics believe it is a
crisis was to have ‘waking visions’, powerful ideas generated psychological tale, the ghosts being hallucinations that
by the imagination. He was aware of his imagination and its have been generated by the unbalanced governess. James
power, but it seems that his interest lay in writing about wrote in his notebook: ‘It is all obscure and imperfect, the
someone not as knowing as himself, someone who had picture, the story, but there is a suggestion of strangely
suffered a traumatic event, and who had visions. His most gruesome effect in it. The tale to be told – tolerably
immediate response to the disaster of the play was that he obviously – by an outside spectator, an observer.’
moved to Lamb House, Rye in Sussex. It was there, while James remained in Rye, taking refuge in his large,
still thinking about the idea of visions, that he wrote The secluded house there as he began to develop his fiction still
Turn of the Screw. It was first published in 1898. further, pushing the boundaries of the novel at the time.

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His last three great works, The Wings of the Dove (1902 ), society which was profoundly superstitious and fearful:
The Ambassadors (1903 ) and The Golden Bowl (1904 ), are the Victorians developed their cemeteries in response to
generally regarded as the first ‘modernist’ novels. In these their fears about ghosts wandering the earth, not having
highly experimental works James used a ‘stream-of- been buried correctly.
consciousness’ style, mimicking the thought processes of Therefore it is perhaps no surprise that when people
the brain, and revealing his characters to be sophisticated, first read James’s story they automatically assumed that
shy, elusive thinkers. While James with these novels didn’t the ghosts were real: there was no debate about it. It was
attain the success of his early years, as he grew older his only in the late 1920 s that the critic Edmund Wilson,
position as a great man of literature became more secure. influenced by the ideas of Freud, put forward the theory
In 1915 he was naturalised as a British subject; not long that the ghosts were products of the governess’s
afterwards he suffered a stroke, from which he never imagination. By this time society had changed: the
properly recovered. He was nevertheless well enough to industrialised death of the First World War had increased
accept the Order of Merit from King George v on New scepticism about the supernatural – people became more
Year’s Day 1916 . He died on 28 February that year. inclined to see the ‘evil’ in human nature. And in the 1920 s
Freud’s theory that repressing sexual feelings and
childhood trauma could lead to people becoming
‘neurotic’ (mentally crippled by feelings of anxiety) was
Contexts of Reading very fashionable. Wilson persuasively argued that the
governess exhibited signs of neurosis in the way that she
We read The Turn of the Screw very differently now. In the responded so wildly to the children – hugging them one
late 19 th century, however, much of the Western world minute and chastising them the next. The underlying
was in thrall to the idea of the supernatural in a fashion theme of sexual intrigue was clearly magnetic for many
which today’s readers just can’t appreciate. Respectable artists as well as critics. In Benjamin Britten’s opera based
middle-class people, royalty, working-class labourers all on the novella – perhaps the creepiest opera ever written –
might have gone to séances, where the dead would be great play is made of some of the story’s central ideas:
called back, or have attended spiritualist meetings which silence, control, corruption. More scarily, the opera
aimed to help the congregation to speak to the dead. Even implies – and more strongly so than in James’s story –
some serious scientists believed in the existence of ghosts. that Quint has sexually abused Miles, and that the
Henry James Snr and William James were both members governess also has an unnatural interest in the children.
of the Society for Psychical Research, and William served Perhaps the best ghost film ever made, The Innocents
as its president from 1894 to 1896 , which indicates that (1961 ), directed by Jack Clayton and starring Deborah
James’s family, intellectual and scientific as they were, Kerr, is a version of The Turn of the Screw which develops
clearly had a profound interest in the existence of spiritual and refines the themes of corruption and neurosis, traits
phenomena. which are very visible in the novella. The novella shares
While such activities still exist, they simply do not have with the film some very powerful and stark visual imagery,
the mainstream appeal or credibility that they had during and also the sense that the children are both innocent and
the time when the novella was written. It was more likely corrupt – that they are clearly misunderstood by the adult
than not that an individual believed in ghosts. This was a world. In this way Clayton manages to bring to the surface

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many of the fears that people had in the early 1960 s: that
children were losing their way, being corrupted by the
adult world; that adults didn’t know what to do about it,
Structure and
and that their meddling made things worse, indeed
corrupted even further. Inspired by the success of this
low-budget movie, many film-makers have attempted to
Theme
film the story, with varying degrees of success. Britten’s
opera and Clayton’s spooky black-and-white movie,
however, remain the definite interpretations – and are well The novel is divided into 2 4 short chapters which
worth experiencing. successively build up to the climatic point of Miles’s death.
The novella’s obsession with children is what makes it The novel’s central theme – that of corruption – is
especially spooky for us today. Even more than the explored in many ways. There is, first of all, the governess’s
Victorians did, we believe that childhood should be a belief that the ghosts are corrupting the children, leading
sacrosanct place, a time of innocence and wonder, of love them to think and do things that they shouldn’t. She
and imaginative play. However, we are very much aware believes that Miles was expelled from school because he
that our children grow up too quickly, and are corrupted was in some way corrupted by Peter Quint into lying,
by the adult world that we inhabit. Miles and Flora, with deceiving, stealing. We don’t learn what Miles actually did,
their precocious abilities and talk, their knowledge of the so this is always open to interpretation. More particularly
adult world, their friendship with the corrupt, debased there is the sense that the governess believes that Quint
Quint and Miss Jessel, have become metaphors for and Miss Jessel were sexually corrupt, conducting an illicit
modern children: old before their time, knowing and affair, and inducting the children into their ways of sexual
aware in a way that they shouldn’t be. And yet, they wear licentiousness. This is perhaps the most horrible aspect of
the veneer of being perfect. Like many children today, they the novella: since we never quite know what the governess
are neglected, fobbed off by paid employees rather than imagines the ghosts to have done, our own imaginations
enjoying real familial love. And we, like the governess in are left free to roam our deepest, darkest fears about
the story, try to interfere, to love and lead in the right adults with children.
direction, but the trouble is that we are not aware of the We might also take the view that the novella charts the
right direction to follow. The fact that adults in modern corruption of the governess: she begins with the honest
times have these worries and concerns about children intention to educate the children as best she can – but
makes The Turn of the Screw particularly resonant. ends by effectively killing a child in her own care. We could
say, if the ghosts were indeed figments of her own
imagination, that she was corrupted by her own fears and
paranoia: she becomes progressively more controlling and
suspicious, provoking Miles to an outburst which leads
him to suffer a heart attack. Moreover, she appears to
draw Mrs Grose the housekeeper into her obsession,
corrupting her into providing details which prop up her
own extreme notions that there are ghosts in the house.

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Thus we could say that The Turn of the Screw is about crisis
corruption on many levels: the corruption of adults, the • One night the governess sees Quint on the stairs and also Flora
corruption of children – and perhaps the corruption of the out of her bed, hiding behind some curtains; Flora won’t say
reader. We, ourselves, are left profoundly disturbed by the what she is doing; a few nights later the governess sees Miss
Jessel at the bottom of the stairs
end of the novella because so much about the narrative is
open-ended: we never know for certain that there were • A number of nights later, after she has decided to go to sleep at a
normal hour for the first time in days, she is awoken at
ghosts, we never know whether or not Miles and Flora midnight; she finds Flora by the window and discovers Miles is
were abused, we never know the governess’s state of mind. standing on the lawn
Our minds become corrupted by the same paranoia that • The governess feels that Miles and Flora meet the ghosts a great
infects the governess. deal and are being corrupted by them; Mrs Grose asks her to
We could break down the novella into the following write to their uncle, but the governess refuses, and says she’ll
structure: leave if Mrs Grose writes to him

climax
opening • One Sunday, walking to church, Miles asks to go back to school,
• Introductory chapter, people telling ghost stories around the saying he will force his uncle to come to Bly; the governess is
fireplace on Christmas Eve; a guest introduces a story about shocked and doesn’t go to church, instead returning to the
Flora and Miles told by a governess, with whom the guest was in house; she considers leaving altogether, when she sees Miss
love Jessel again; she shouts at Miss Jessel who disappears; she
decides not to leave because she must protect the children; she
• We start reading the governess’s written account; a handsome
agrees to write to the uncle
bachelor, resident in London, employs her to educate his nephew
and niece at Bly, a country house in Essex • Later, she and Mrs Grose find Flora by the lake, and the
governess sees Miss Jessel again; she points the ghost out to
Flora and Mrs Grose, who both say that they can see it; Flora
complications says the governess is cruel; the governess breaks down in
• The governess meets Mrs Grose (the housekeeper) and Flora, hysterics
and learns that Miles has been expelled from school; she sees a
strange man on the house’s tower and, later, at the dining-room
window; she rushes there only to find him gone, startling Mrs resolution
Grose in the process; Mrs Grose identifies the man as Peter • Mrs Grose and the governess discover that the letter to the uncle
Quint was not sent because the servant, Luke, could not find it
• The governess becomes very watchful with Miles, worried that • Flora becomes sick and leaves with Mrs Grose to go to the uncle
Quint is a malign influence upon him; at a lake with Flora, she to recover, leaving the governess with Miles
sees a woman in black and believes that Flora can also see the • The governess interrogates Miles, who admits to taking the
ghost but won’t admit it; she works out, after a conversation letter; the governess screams when she sees Quint at the
with Mrs Grose, that the woman is Miss Jessel, the former window; she points him out to Miles, who asks if it is Quint but
governess appears to see nothing; Miles, clearly deeply traumatised by his
interrogation and his possible sighting of the ghost, dies from a
heart attack

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The Influence of Genre – One could interpret The Turn of the Screw as making the
The Role of the Gothic same point. Much of the novella seems to follow the
conventions of the Gothic novel: there is a remote,
It was not that I didn’t wait, on this occasion, for more, crumbling setting, an overwhelming sense of isolation, a
for I was rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a damsel in distress, and the supernatural in the form of
‘secret’ at Bly – a mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an two wicked ghosts, Quint and Jessel – as well as an
unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement? enigmatic owner of the house. That said, the story might
I can’t say how long I turned it over, or how long, in a extend beyond the boundaries of the stereotypical Gothic
confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where I had novel: it could be the governess’s hysterical imagination
had my collision; I only recall that when I re-entered the which is at the root of it all, and which leads to the tragedy
house darkness had quite closed in. at the end. We could therefore say that James’s point is
almost identical to Austen’s: people whose imaginations
Early on in the novella the governess speculates about Bly, have been infected with nonsensical notions of the
wondering whether it is a setting that might be found in a supernatural (notions that the Gothic genre deliberately
Gothic novel. She refers to the famous fictional setting of tries to foster) are diseased and dangerous people. They
Udolpho, from Ann Radcliffe’s best-selling novel, The are certainly not people fit to hold a position of
Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). For many critics this work is the responsibility such as looking after children.
very essence of the Gothic novel. It has all the key But the thing about James’s writing is that one cannot
ingredients: haunting, ancient castles and mansions, categorise it so easily. In Northanger Abbey Austen’s point,
apparently ghostly events, a nasty, wicked villain, and a that fevered imaginations are destructive, is crystal clear;
heroine who is persecuted for being good. The novel focuses James, however, is far from so certain, for there is always
upon Emily St Aubert, a French orphan imprisoned in the the sense that the governess may just be right. We are
castle of Udolpho by the villainous Signor Montoni. The plot never sure that the ghosts don’t exist. Indeed, James does
is sensational, full of hysteria and action, with undertones not mock the conventions of the Gothic but pays homage
of racier content: sexual intrigue, murder, corruption. The to them, developing and refining them to make the genre
governess’s mention of the novel is fascinating because it live again. He takes the very well-worn formula of the
was much imitated and much mocked by the time Henry haunted house and rejuvenates it by making the story
James came to write The Turn of the Screw, nearly a hundred intensely claustrophobic, and psychological in approach.
years later. Most famously, it was parodied by Jane Austen There is no doubt that a big influence here was the writing
in Northanger Abbey, the heroine of which was so obsessed of his friend Robert Louis Stevenson, whose Strange Case
with the novel that she jumped to all sorts of false Of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde also pushed the boundaries of
conclusions about the crumbling venue in which she was the Gothic genre, taking it into a much more psychological
staying. Austen mocked the genre in this novel, making it realm.
clear that she thought that it was far too sensational and In this sense James’s model was not primarily the
that it encouraged hysterical thoughts. Her underlying Gothic but the social realist novels written by him and
point was that the Gothic genre as a whole fostered diseased other 19 th-century writers like George Eliot, Turgenev,
minds: it encouraged wilful and wild speculation, and Émile Zola and Gustave Flaubert. These were all writers
induced paranoia and suspicion. whose primary interest was in writing about the human

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 henry james – the turn of the screw

character in a realistic and psychologically truthful way:

thoughts, feelings, sensations, sights, sounds, smells and
tastes are described in a very vivid fashion so that the
Critical
reader has the real sense of living inside the characters’
minds. Compared with most Gothic novels, very little
actually happens in The Turn of the Screw. Indeed, apart
Perspectives
from the death of Miles at the very end, it could be argued
that virtually nothing happens at all, apart from Miles’s
expulsion from school and the disappearance of the letter.
Other pieces of the action such as Miles standing on the The Unreliable Narrator in
lawn at midnight and Flora hiding behind a curtain seem The Turn of the Screw
relatively trivial when looked at objectively. However,
because James takes us so vividly into the governess’s What do the hugely successful horror films The Blair Witch
mind, we feel that they are momentous events. It is the Project and The Sixth Sense have in common with the
way in which James anatomises the mind of the governess fiction of Henry James? Even if you are aware of these
that gives the novella its lasting power: whether we believe films, you’ll probably say not much. After all, Henry James
in the ghosts or not, we are gripped by his realistic is famous for writing impenetrable, highly ornate novels
description of her changing thoughts, feelings and about upper-crust Americans and Europeans who lived in
responses to the events around her. the late Victorian era and his name is rarely associated
with popular movies which star Bruce Willis.
However, Henry James is not the rarefied writer that
many people think he is. The Turn of the Screw, one of his
best stories, has many similarities with the Hollywood
chiller-thriller The Sixth Sense. Both narratives use children
as their main characters and generate suspense by being
both scary and disturbing. While many people couldn’t
sleep after seeing the movie, it is James’s story which is
arguably more frightening. The Sixth Sense is about a
disillusioned psychiatrist, played by Bruce Willis, who
helps a young boy who is troubled by visions of dead
people. James’s story employs a similar narrative device of
having children conversing with the dead. Moreover, what
makes the boy terrifying in The Sixth Sense is what makes
Miles terrifying in James’s fiction: his inscrutability. We
never quite know what the boy is up to until the very end
of the movie. Ultimately, the film hinges upon the fact
that its narrator, Bruce Willis, is unreliable: he doesn’t
know the full truth.

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Henry James pioneered the technique of the unreliable land, but one who feels he or she understands it. She is an
narrator. In the same way that The Sixth Sense is told unreliable narrator because she feels so certain in the
exclusively from Bruce Willis’s point of view, so too is The truth of what she sees: she has the brash assurance that
Turn of the Screw recounted from the sexually repressed James felt was characteristic of his countrymen.
governess’s vantage point. James manages to make the
reader sympathise with the teacher’s plight but also see
that the ghosts might be figments of her hysterical Selected Reading on The Turn of the Screw
imagination. Real mystery is engendered because the
Peter G. Beidler (editor)
reader never quite knows who is evil. Are the children
The Turn of the Screw – Case Studies in
really so two-faced that they are conspiring with
Contemporary Criticism
malevolent spooks or is the over-anxious but caring tutor (Bedford/St Martins; 2003)
losing her mind to paranoia? The unreliable narration of
This volume presents, as well as the text of the New York
the governess is vital in creating this kind of suspense Edition of The Turn of the Screw, critical essays that examine it
because if we believed her fully there would be very little from contemporary reader-response, psychoanalytic, gender
mystery. and Marxist perspectives.
Henry James was intrigued by his experiences of both
America and Europe. In many ways, all his work –
including, obliquely, The Turn of the Screw – explores the
corrupt but sophisticated hypocrisy of Europeans and the
effect the Europeans had on visiting Americans. Many of
his novels start from the simple premise of a wealthy
American journeying around Europe and finding him or
herself embroiled with a seductive, older European who is
usually after the American’s money or seeking to shatter
the visitor’s peace of mind. Of course this is a crude
generalisation because James’s work is very subtle: he
observes the tiniest changes of emotions and the smallest
shifts in power that occur between people as they become
acquainted. This is what makes James’s novels so exciting.
Human relations are like a poker game in which the
highest stakes are being played for. While The Turn of the
Screw does not contain any American characters, it is not
difficult to see that the governess is rather like an
American arriving in Europe: in much the same way that
James’s Americans jump to conclusions about the world
they see in Europe, the governess jumps to conclusions
about the situation at Bly. Her suspicions, her fears, her
paranoia are like the paranoia of a person in a very foreign

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Notes, Quotes
and Discussion
Important extracts and quotations from
the novel with commentary and
discussion points.
The discussion points below are deliberately questions with no
right or wrong answers given. They are there to help you think
in more depth about particular aspects of the book.
n.b. All the following quotations are from the complete,
unabridged text.

From Prologue
‘Then your manuscript –?’
‘Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand.’ He
hung fire again. ‘A woman’s. 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
sister’s governess,’ he quietly said. ‘She was the most
agreeable woman I’ve ever known in her position; she
would have been worthy of any whatever. It was long
ago, and this episode was long before.’

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The novella opens with a description of a Christmas Eve at Bly, which was healthy and secure, and had placed at the
an ancient house where a group is listening to each other’s head of their little establishment – but below stairs only
ghost stories. The atmosphere is slightly spooky, but jolly – an excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, whom he was sure his
as well. As an introduction to the main story of the visitor would like and who had formerly been maid to his
evening, a person called Douglas tells about two children –
Flora and Miles – and his sister’s governess with whom he mother. She was now housekeeper and was also acting
was in love. This is a vital piece of information because it for the time as superintendent to the little girl, of whom,
introduces the key theme of sexual desire, which in the without children of her own, she was, by good luck,
story is explored in some depth, but in a coded fashion. extremely fond.
Notice the language of attraction is hidden at this point:
he simply describes the woman as ‘agreeable’. Moreover, We are provided with some background to the story before
this reveals that the governess of the story is no plain it begins properly: we learn that the governess was
frump, but a desirable woman. appointed by a handsome unmarried man to take care of
his orphaned nephew and niece. Notice how the character
! discussion point of Mrs Grose is introduced: she is of a lower class, a ‘maid’,
Why does James start the story not with the main and, although a ‘superintendent’ to Flora, she is ‘below
narrator but with a gathering where ghost stories are stairs’. Mrs Grose’s lowly social position is very important
being told? in the story because it renders her powerless to deal with
the governess’s growing hysteria towards the end of the
story. The reader initially assumes that she is a simple
! woman because she is lower class, but as the story
progresses we realise that this is not the case.

He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, ! discussion point
guardian to a small nephew and a small niece, children Why does James choose as his setting an old country
of a younger, a military brother, whom he had lost two house in Essex?
years before. These children were, by the strangest of
chances for a man in his position – a lone man without
the right sort of experience or a grain of patience – very From Chapter I
heavily on his hands. It had all been a great worry … but
he immensely pitied the poor chicks and had done all he … I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a
could; had in particular sent them down to his other handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I
house, the proper place for them being of course the was, strangely, at the helm!
country … The awkward thing was that they had The governess introduces the imagery of a ship here:
practically no other relations and that his own affairs imagery which filters in and out of the story. The
took up all his time. He had put them in possession of metaphor gives us a sense of her lack of experience. She

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describes herself as being ‘strangely, at the helm’. In other From Chapter II

words, she realises that she is in charge – and her mixed
feelings about being responsible for the children are ‘They go into no particulars. They simply express their
central to what happens in the narrative. regret that it should be impossible to keep him. That can
have only one meaning.’ Mrs. Grose listened with dumb
! discussion point emotion; she forbore to ask me what this meaning might
Why does James use imagery connected with ships during be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some
this story?
coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my
! own mind, I went on: ‘That he’s an injury to the others.’
At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she
I reflected that my first duty was, by the gentlest arts I
suddenly flamed up.
could contrive, to win the child into the sense of knowing
me. I spent the day with her out-of-doors; I arranged ‘Master Miles! HIM an injury?’ …It’s too dreadful,’ cried
with her, to her great satisfaction, that it should be she, Mrs. Grose, ‘to say such cruel things! Why, he’s scarce
she only, who might show me the place. She showed it ten years old.’
step by step and room by room and secret by secret, with
‘Yes, yes; it would be incredible.’
droll, delightful, childish talk about it and with the
result, in half an hour, of our becoming immense friends. She was evidently grateful for such a profession. ‘See him,
miss, first. THEN believe it!’ I felt forthwith a new
We gain a real sense of the anxiety of the governess at the
impatience to see him; it was the beginning of a curiosity
beginning of her narrative because she is so worried about
getting on with her ‘charges’ – her pupils. We realise, that, for all the next hours, was to deepen almost to pain.
though, that the governess is a good and receptive teacher, Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of what she had
encouraging Flora to show her the house – to be in charge, produced in me, and she followed it up with assurance.
as it were. We also see how much the governess delights in
the ‘childish’ talk of Flora. The result of this is that they ‘You might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless her,’
become ‘immense friends’, and here we see the ambivalent she added the next moment – ‘LOOK at her!’
feelings of the governess sneaking into her narrative. She
is ‘childish’ herself: she wants to be fantastic friends with I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I
Flora more than she wants to be the adult responsible for had established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white
her. paper, a pencil, and a copy of nice ‘round o’s,’ now
presented herself to view at the open door.
! discussion point
How important is it for teachers to become ‘immense Notice here how James presents the governess through his
friends’ with their pupils? What are the advantages and use of dialogue. A repeated trait of the governess is that
disadvantages of teachers and pupils becoming friends? she jumps to very definite conclusions based on limited or

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flimsy evidence. Her comment ‘That can have only one the question with such a fine bold humor that, with a
meaning... that he’s an injury to the others’ is one of the laugh, a little silly doubtless, to match her own, I gave
first examples of this: she immediately turns Miles’s way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule.
expulsion from school into a disaster, thinking that he
must be a destructive personality. This tendency of hers to The conversations between Mrs Grose and the governess
‘catastrophise’ – to turn events into catastrophes – is at form much of the dynamic of the novella. Here we see a
the heart of the cause of the tragedy in this story, and crucial element to them. The governess interrogates Mrs
possibly explains why she sees the ghosts. The fact that Grose to ask if she truly knows Miles; she replies that she
her desire to meet Miles ‘deepen[s] almost to pain’ is has not known him to be naughty. Both women agree that
another indicator of the governess’s unstable nature. it’s no good to have a child who is never naughty, but then
the governess takes things a step further by suggesting
! discussion point that Miles’s naughtiness might ‘contaminate’ and
Why do people like to interpret events in the worst ‘corrupt’. These are two very important verbs: one of the
possible light? For what reasons do pupils get expelled story’s really creepy elements is the way in which James
from school? persuades us that there is something ‘corrupting’ and
‘contaminating’ about Miles; we know the feeling to be
! irrational, since there is no evidence for it, but it is there
nevertheless.
‘Oh, never known him [to be bad] – I don’t pretend THAT!’ ! discussion point
I was upset again. ‘Then you HAVE known him –?’ What is ‘corrupting’ behaviour in your view? What do you
think the governess means about Miles ‘contaminating’
‘Yes indeed, miss, thank God!’ and ‘corrupting’?

On reflection I accepted this. ‘You mean that a boy who

never is –?’
!
‘Is no boy for ME!’
I held her tighter. ‘You like them with the spirit to be But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I
naughty?’ Then, keeping pace with her answer, ‘So do I!’ I cropped up in another place. ‘What was the lady who
eagerly brought out. ‘But not to the degree to contaminate –’ was here before?’
‘To contaminate?’ – my big word left her at a loss. I ‘The last governess? She was also young and pretty –
explained it. ‘To corrupt.’ almost as young and almost as pretty, miss, even as you.’
She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her ‘Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!’ I
an odd laugh. ‘Are you afraid he’ll corrupt YOU?’ She put recollect throwing off. ‘He seems to like us young and pretty!’

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‘Oh, he DID,’ Mrs. Grose assented: ‘it was the way he absent master ‘seems to like us young and pretty’, we have
liked everyone!’ She had no sooner spoken indeed than a sense that she is both attracted and repelled by this
she caught herself up. ‘I mean that’s HIS way – the notion. Then Mrs Grose disturbs the governess by making
master’s.’ a veiled reference to Peter Quint, which she corrects
hastily. Thus James begins to create a real mystery about
I was struck. ‘But of whom did you speak first?’ this anonymous man who lusted after the previous
governess. Mrs Grose is very hesitant and vague about
She looked blank, but she colored. ‘Why, of HIM.’ events, which makes us wonder what has happened.
Notice the way in which James uses pronouns to great
‘Of the master?’ effect in the story: ‘him’ is ambiguous, and this lack of
‘Of who else?’ certainty over his identity is important in creating
suspense.
There was so obviously no one else that the next moment
I had lost my impression of her having accidentally said ! discussion point
more than she meant; and I merely asked what I wanted Why does Mrs Grose ‘colour’?
to know. ‘Did SHE see anything in the boy –?’
‘That wasn’t right? She never told me.’
From Chapter III
I had a scruple, but I overcame it. ‘Was she careful –
particular?’ What arrested me on the spot – and with a shock much
greater than any vision had allowed for – was the sense
Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. ‘About that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real. He did
some things – yes.’ stand there! – but high up, beyond the lawn and at the
‘But not about all?’ very top of the tower to which, on that first morning,
little Flora had conducted me. …
Again she considered. ‘Well, miss – she’s gone. I won’t
tell tales.’ It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twilight, I
remember, two distinct gasps of emotion, which were,
‘I quite understand your feeling,’ I hastened to reply; but sharply, the shock of my first and that of my second
I thought it, after an instant, not opposed to this
surprise. My second was a violent perception of the
concession to pursue: ‘Did she die here?’
mistake of my first: the man who met my eyes was not
‘No – she went off.’ the person I had precipitately supposed. There came to
me thus a bewilderment of vision of which, after these
James builds suspense by creating a real sense of mystery years, there is no living view that I can hope to give. …
and sexual intrigue. When the governess says that the The place, moreover, in the strangest way in the world,

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had, on the instant, and by the very fact of its had begun by entertaining for the probable gray prose of
appearance, become a solitude. … I can hear again, as I my office. …
write, the intense hush in which the sounds of evening
Both the children had a gentleness … that kept them –
dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky,
how shall I express it? – almost impersonal and certainly
and the friendly hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. …
quite unpunishable. They were like the cherubs of the
We were confronted across our distance quite long
anecdote, who had – morally, at any rate – nothing to
enough for me to ask myself with intensity who then he
whack! … Of course I was under the spell, and the
was and to feel, as an effect of my inability to say, a
wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew
wonder that in a few instants more became intense.
I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to
This is the first sighting of a ghost. It is important to look any pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt
closely at it because it shows James breaking many in these days of disturbing letters from home, where
conventions of the ghost story: the sighting does not things were not going well. But with my children, what
happen at night but in daylight, amidst the ‘golden sky’. things in the world mattered? That was the question I
However, there is an important moment of silence: ‘an
intense hush’. James uses silence to great effect in the used to put to my scrappy retirements. I was dazzled by
story: the ghosts often appear at moments of apparent their loveliness.
peace, not during great storms as is the convention.
James manages to build more suspense by making the
Moreover, at this point, the governess is not certain
children very well behaved. There is something terrifyingly
whether it is a ghost at all: her eyes connect with the
ghost, making him vividly human, and not one of the unreal about them being ‘unpunishable’. The governess’s
eyeless ghosts in traditional spooky stories. description of being ‘dazzled by their loveliness’ is
interesting; her being ‘dazzled’, blinded almost, by their
! discussion point charm gives us the sense that she can’t see them properly.
How effective is this description of the first sighting of
! discussion point
Peter Quint? Do you find it chilling? If so, what is scary
Why does James describe the children as being
about it?
‘impersonal’?

From Chapter IV
!
… what, essentially, made nothing else much signify was His face was close to the glass, yet the effect of this
simply my charming work. My charming work was just better view was, strangely, only to show me how intense
my life with Miles and Flora … The attraction of my the former had been. He remained but a few seconds –
small charges was a constant joy, leading me to wonder long enough to convince me he also saw and recognized;
afresh at the vanity of my original fears, the distaste I but it was as if I had been looking at him for years and

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had known him always. Something, however, happened ! discussion point

this time that had not happened before; his stare into my Why do you think the governess has a ‘sudden vibration of
face, through the glass and across the room, was as deep duty and courage’?
and hard as then, but it quitted me for a moment during
which I could still watch it, see it fix successively several
other things. On the spot there came to me the added
From Chapter V
shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come
there. He had come for someone else. Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the
house, she loomed again into view. ‘What in the name of
The flash of this knowledge – for it was knowledge in the
goodness is the matter –?’ She was now flushed and out
midst of dread – produced in me the most extraordinary of breath.
effect, started as I stood there, a sudden vibration of
duty and courage. I say courage because I was beyond all I said nothing till she came quite near. ‘With me?’ I must
doubt already far gone. I bounded straight out of the have made a wonderful face. ‘Do I show it?’
door again, reached that of the house, got, in an instant, ‘You’re as white as a sheet. You look awful.’ …
upon the drive, and, passing along the terrace as fast as I
could rush, turned a corner and came full in sight. But it ‘You came for me for church, of course, but I can’t go.’
was in sight of nothing now – my visitor had vanished. ‘Has anything happened?’
The second sighting of Peter Quint is creepier than the ‘Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?’
first for a number of reasons. Firstly, the governess
responds much more intensely towards him. Her words ‘It ‘Through this window? Dreadful!’
was as if I had been looking at him for years and had
known him always’ create real drama, since we are ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve been frightened.’ Mrs. Grose’s eyes
immediately curious as to what she finds familiar about expressed plainly that SHE had no wish to be, yet also
him, what makes her feel that she has known him always. that she knew too well her place not to be ready to share
There is something very intimate about her reaction to with me any marked inconvenience. Oh, it was quite
him: it is similar to the response of a person who has fallen settled that she MUST share! ‘Just what you saw from
in love with a stranger. This response gives an extra twist
the dining room a minute ago was the effect of that.
and frisson of feeling to the sentence that follows: ‘He had
come for someone else.’ In other words, there is the sense What I saw – just before – was much worse.’
that she is disappointed by his not coming for her. Her Her hand tightened. ‘What was it?’
reaction is extreme: she has a ‘flash of dread’ which turns
into a ‘sudden vibration of duty and courage’. James’s ‘An extraordinary man. Looking in.’
language brilliantly conveys her bodily sensations, and
this makes her belief in the ghosts all the more convincing. ‘What extraordinary man?’

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‘I haven’t the least idea.’ She faltered but a second. ‘Quint!’ she cried.
Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. ‘Then where is he ‘Quint?’
gone?’
‘Peter Quint – his own man, his valet, when he was
‘I know still less.’ here!’
‘Have you seen him before?’ ‘When the master was?’
‘Yes – once. On the old tower.’ Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together.
‘He never wore his hat, but he did wear – well, there
She could only look at me harder. ‘Do you mean he’s a
were waistcoats missed. They were both here – last year.
stranger?’
Then the master went, and Quint was alone.’
This tense dialogue between Mrs Grose and the governess
I followed, but halting a little. ‘Alone?’
is effective because of its brevity. The governess’s choice of
adjective to describe Quint is interesting: she describes ‘Alone with US.’ Then, as from a deeper depth, ‘In
him as ‘extraordinary’, almost as if she is deeply impressed charge,’ she added.
by him.
‘And what became of him?’
! discussion point
What do you think Mrs Grose is thinking at this point? She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. ‘He
went, too,’ she brought out at last.
! ‘Went where?’

‘You know him then?’ Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. ‘God
knows where! He died.’
She visibly tried to hold herself. ‘But he IS handsome?’
‘Died?’ I almost shrieked.
I saw the way to help her. ‘Remarkably!’
She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more
‘And dressed –?’
firmly to utter the wonder of it. ‘Yes. Mr. Quint is dead.’
‘In somebody’s clothes. ‘They’re smart, but they’re not his
own.’ The revelation that the governess’s vision is really the
ghost of Peter Quint is very important to analyse. Firstly,
She broke into a breathless affirmative groan: ‘They’re the governess’s admission to having found her vision
the master’s!’ ‘remarkably’ handsome is significant because we realise
that she was attracted by the ghost. Twentieth-century
I caught it up. ‘You DO know him?’ critics have therefore argued that Quint could be a product

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of the governess’s sexually repressed imagination, a She didn’t deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so
hallucination which has occurred because she is sexually much telling as that. She resumed in a moment, at any
unfulfilled as well as neurotic. Notice that she ‘shrieks’ rate: ‘What if HE should see him?’
when she hears that Quint was dead, indicating her
emotional state of mind, which contrasts with Mrs Grose’s ‘Little Miles? That’s what he wants!’
more measured mystification. However, there is some
evidence to suggest that the governess is not mad: she saw She looked immensely scared again. ‘The child?’
Quint as having red hair and wearing clothes belonging to Here we see the governess beginning to jump to conclusions.
the master and this she couldn’t possibly have known We have no evidence that the ghost is looking for Miles other
about beforehand. In other words, she did not see a vague than her intuition that he is. James’s presentation of this is
vision which she has feverishly interpreted as being a fascinating: he describes her as being ‘possessed’ by a
ghost: she saw a very distinct vision which quite definitely ‘portentous clearness’ – in much the same way as a religious
matches the description of Quint. person might describe someone being ‘possessed’ by the devil.
The difference here is that the governess is possessed by a
! discussion point ‘clearness’. Her narrative is persuasive, but perhaps this is
How does James create suspense in the above passage? Do where she goes wrong. Perhaps there was really a ghost, but it
you think James is suggesting that she saw a real ghost or
hadn’t come for the children at all. Her first sighting of Quint
does he drop enough hints that the ghost is a product of indicates that he had initially come for her, something that her
her fevered, unbalanced imagination? repressed nature couldn’t endure. Furthermore, during her
conversation with Mrs Grose the governess becomes even
more unbalanced as she begins to believe her own perceptions
with more conviction. Her ‘exaltation’ grows. This noun is
fascinating because of its religious connotations: the governess
From Chapter VI is exalted like a holy man through her knowledge of what the
ghost wants. In other words, she casts the ghost as a devil and
We had gone over and over every feature of what I had herself as a saviour. She perceives herself as battling against
seen. evil, and feels greatly energised by this concept. Finally, she has
an important role to play. She is no longer an ordinary
‘He was looking for someone else, you say – someone who
governess, teaching a couple of rich children, but someone who
was not you?’ is discovering real evil.
‘He was looking for little Miles.’ A portentous clearness
! discussion point
now possessed me. ‘THAT’S whom he was looking for.’ What evidence is there that Mrs Grose is rather sceptical?
‘But how do you know?’
‘I know, I know, I know!’ My exaltation grew. ‘And YOU
know, my dear!’
!
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‘It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned –’ case. Her question ‘Too free with MY boy?’ is very
important because it reveals two things: firstly the notion
She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. ‘His that Quint encouraged the boy to be ‘free’ or ‘licentious’,
having been here and the time they were with him?’ in other words allowed the boy’s evil side free rein;
secondly, the insecure possessiveness of the governess, to
‘The time they were with him, and his name, his
whom Miles has become ‘MY boy’.
presence, his history, in any way.’
‘Oh, the little lady doesn’t remember. She never heard or ! discussion point
Look at the way in which James describes the governess’s
knew.’ feelings. What are those feelings and why does James
‘The circumstances of his death?’ I thought with some present the governess in this way?
intensity. ‘Perhaps not. But Miles would remember –
Miles would know.’
‘Ah, don’t try him!’ broke from Mrs. Grose.
From Chapter VI
My heart had stood still for an instant with the wonder
I returned her the look she had given me. ‘Don’t be
and terror of the question whether she too would see;
afraid.’ I continued to think. ‘It IS rather odd.’
and I held my breath while I waited for what a cry from
‘That he has never spoken of him?’ her, what some sudden innocent sign either of interest or
of alarm, would tell me. I waited, but nothing came;
‘Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were
then, in the first place – and there is something more
“great friends”?’
dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relate – I
‘Oh, it wasn’t HIM!’ Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared. was determined by a sense that, within a minute, all
‘It was Quint’s own fancy. To play with him, I mean – to sounds from her had previously dropped; and, in the
spoil him.’ She paused a moment; then she added: ‘Quint second, by the circumstance that, also within the minute,
was much too free.’ she had, in her play, turned her back to the water.
This gave me, straight from my vision of his face – SUCH Now certain that the ghost is after Miles, wishing to
a face! – a sudden sickness of disgust. ‘Too free with MY corrupt him, the governess becomes even more possessive
boy?’ of the children, not letting them out of her sight. Then one
day, while at the lake with Flora, she sees a woman dressed
As the governess learns more about the past, she builds in black and senses that it is Miss Jessel, the governess
upon the scenario that she has begun to shape for herself: who preceded her. Here James creates suspense by having
that she must save the children from the evil ghost. Mrs the governess observe Flora with the ghost, wondering
Grose’s comments are guarded, but we see the clever whether there will be a ‘cry from her’. We and the
governess snatch at the trifling evidence to build her own governess await a shriek from Flora but nothing comes.

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Indeed, Flora’s utter lack of concern seems all the more overflowed. ‘I don’t do it!’ I sobbed in despair; ‘I don’t
haunting: is it the case that she is so familiar with the save or shield them! It’s far worse than I dreamed –
ghost that she doesn’t need to cry out, or that she just they’re lost!’
can’t see her?
Mrs Grose here reveals more about the past at Bly: Quint
! discussion point had had an affair with Miss Jessel who, as a result, was
Why does James now introduce a new ghost, Miss Jessel, forced to leave. As Mrs Grose says, ‘She couldn’t have
do you think? Why is she dressed in black? stayed. Fancy it here – for a governess!’ Here the truth is
not spoken aloud: this was a deeply repressed society
which did not talk openly about sexual liaisons, but
instead only alluded to them. This gave them even an even
greater grip on the imagination, for as Mrs Grose says:
From Chapter VII ‘And afterwards I imagined – and I still imagined. And
what I imagine is dreadful.’ Naturally she does not explain
Mrs. Grose’s face signified that it had been indeed, but fully here, but it is clear that she is talking about the
she said at the same time: ‘Poor woman – she paid for it!’ sexual congress between Quint and Miss Jessel. Not to be
outdone, the governess goes one better: ‘Not so dreadful
‘Then you do know what she died of?’ I asked. as what I do.’ The governess imagines the damnation and
‘No – I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad corruption of the children (‘they’re lost’) because they are
in league with the ghosts, imbibing the ghosts’ corrupt
enough I didn’t; and I thanked heaven she was well out views, values and ideas. Again, nothing is explicitly stated,
of this!’ but there is a sense that the children are aware of sexual
matters that they shouldn’t be at such a young age. Some
‘Yet you had, then, your idea –’
critics have felt that the governess imagines them as
‘Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes – as to that. She having been sexually abused by the ghosts. The horror
couldn’t have stayed. Fancy it here – for a governess! here is the more intense because we never quite know
what is in the governess’s imagination.
And afterward I imagined – and I still imagine. And
what I imagine is dreadful.’ ! discussion point
‘Not so dreadful as what I do,’ I replied; on which I must If the ghosts are real and the children can see them, what
do you think is going on? If you think the ghosts are not
have shown her – as I was indeed but too conscious – a
real, then what does this tell us about the governess and
front of miserable defeat. It brought out again all her Mrs Grose?
compassion for me, and at the renewed touch of her
kindness my power to resist broke down. I burst, as I
had, the other time, made her burst, into tears; she took
me to her motherly breast, and my lamentation

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From Chapter VIII something in the boy that suggested to you,’ I continued,
‘that he covered and concealed their relation.’
‘When they had been about together quite as if Quint ‘Oh, he couldn’t prevent –’
were his tutor – and a very grand one – and Miss Jessel
only for the little lady. When he had gone off with the ‘Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens,’ I fell,
fellow, I mean, and spent hours with him.’ with vehemence, athinking, ‘what it shows that they
must, to that extent, have succeeded in making of him!’
‘He then prevaricated about it – he said he hadn’t?’ Her
assent was clear enough to cause me to add in a moment: James is very careful to show Mrs Grose’s ambivalence
‘I see. He lied.’ here and also the governess’s determination to extract
from her a version of events which offers little room for
‘Oh!’ Mrs. Grose mumbled. This was a suggestion that it doubt. Notice how – after Mrs Grose offers her ‘assent’ to
didn’t matter; which indeed she backed up by a further her own comment that Quint spent hours with Miles – the
remark. ‘You see, after all, Miss Jessel didn’t mind. She governess extrapolates that Miles ‘prevaricated’ or was
hesitant with Mrs Grose, inferring that Miles lied about
didn’t forbid him.’
being with Quint. She is now twisting Mrs Grose’s account
I considered. ‘Did he put that to you as a justification?’ to suit her vision that Miles ‘concealed’ his relation with
Quint while the servant was alive, thus paving the way for
At this she dropped again. ‘No, he never spoke of it.’ her to say that Miles must necessarily conceal his relation
with the ghostly Quint. We see how the more dominant,
‘Never mentioned her in connection with Quint?’
more verbal woman crushes Mrs Grose into accepting her
She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. ‘Well, version of events, both past and present. Mrs Grose
he didn’t show anything. He denied,’ she repeated; ‘he ‘groans’: the governess interprets this as being an
admission that something horrible is going on. But we
denied.’ could see this as Mrs Grose becoming increasingly
Lord, how I pressed her now! ‘So that you could see he concerned about having the governess’s version of events
pressed upon her.
knew what was between the two wretches?’
‘I don’t know – I don’t know!’ the poor woman groaned. ! discussion point
What do you think about the way in which Mrs Grose and
‘You do know, you dear thing,’ I replied; ‘only you haven’t the governess are being presented here?
my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of
timidity and modesty and delicacy, 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 shall get it out of you yet! There was

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From Chapter IX to the governess’s contradictory feelings towards Quint.

There is hatred, but also an awareness that his living
I can say now neither what determined nor what guided presence is thrillingly exciting as only a dangerous person
me, but I went straight along the lobby, holding my can be.
candle high, till I came within sight of the tall window
that presided over the great turn of the staircase. At this ! discussion point
How does James build suspense at this point? In what
point I precipitately found myself aware of three things.
ways is this part of the novella like a traditional ghost
They were practically simultaneous, yet they had flashes story, and in what ways does it differ?
of succession. My candle, under a bold flourish, went out,
and I perceived, by the uncovered window, that the
yielding dusk of earliest morning rendered it !
unnecessary. Without it, the next instant, I saw that
She was face to face with the apparition we had met at
there was someone on the stair. I speak of sequences, but
the lake, and could now communicate with it as she had
I required no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself for a third
not then been able to do. What I, on my side, had to care
encounter with Quint. The apparition had reached the
for was, without disturbing her, to reach, from the
landing halfway up and was therefore on the spot
corridor, some other window in the same quarter. I got to
nearest the window, where at sight of me, it stopped
the door without her hearing me; I got out of it, closed it,
short and fixed me exactly as it had fixed me from the
and listened, from the other side, for some sound from
tower and from the garden. He knew me as well as I
her. …
knew him; and so, in the cold, faint twilight, with a
glimmer in the high glass and another on the polish of … There was a figure in the grounds – a figure prowling
the oak stair below, we faced each other in our common for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged;
intensity. He was absolutely, on this occasion, a living, but it was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. I
detestable, dangerous presence. hesitated afresh, but on other grounds and only for a few
seconds; then I had made my choice. There were empty
After a lull in events, at night Quint appears again. This is
rooms at Bly, and it was only a question of choosing the
the first time that a ghost has appeared at night: the
atmosphere is very Gothic and deliberately spooky. What right one. The right one suddenly presented itself to me
is fascinating is that despite the candle being put out, the as the lower one – though high above the gardens – in
governess is very brave, not worried at all. Far from it, she the solid corner of the house that I have spoken of as the
says, ‘we faced each other in our common intensity’. This old tower. … I had only, after just faltering at the first
is a magnetic description, the two of them seeming both chill gloom of its disuse, to pass across it and unbolt as
attracted and repelled by each other. She describes him as
a ‘living’ presence: he has physicality for her. The quietly as I could one of the shutters. Achieving this
alliteration of ‘detestable’ and ‘dangerous’ draws attention transit, I uncovered the glass without a sound and,

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applying my face to the pane, was able, the darkness From Chapter XI
without being much less than within, to see that I
commanded the right direction. Then I saw something ‘Then you didn’t undress at all?’
more. The moon made the night extraordinarily He fairly glittered in the gloom. ‘Not at all. I sat up and
penetrable and showed me on the lawn a person, read.’
diminished by distance, who stood there motionless and
as if fascinated, looking up to where I had appeared – ‘And when did you go down?’
looking, that is, not so much straight at me as at ‘At midnight. When I’m bad I AM bad!’
something that was apparently above me. There was
clearly another person above me – there was a person on ‘I see, I see – it’s charming. But how could you be sure I
the tower; but the presence on the lawn was not in the would know it?’
least what I had conceived and had confidently hurried ‘Oh, I arranged that with Flora.’ His answers rang out
to meet. The presence on the lawn – I felt sick as I made with a readiness! ‘She was to get up and look out.’
it out – was poor little Miles himself.
‘Which is what she did do.’ It was I who fell into the trap!
James has carefully built up to this moment. Before it, on
the night that her candle was extinguished and she saw ‘So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking
Quint on the stairs, the governess found Flora out of her at, you also looked – you saw.’
bed and hiding behind a curtain, but not willing to explain ‘While you,’ I concurred, ‘caught your death in the night
why. Now, discovering Flora by the window but being
careful not to disturb her, the governess sees Miles air!’
standing on the lawn apparently looking at Quint who is He literally bloomed so from this exploit that he could
standing above her. Notice how skilful James’s description
is: on the one hand it is a very haunting, supernatural afford radiantly to assent. ‘How otherwise should I have
account of children conversing with ghosts (if we believe been bad enough?’ he asked. Then, after another
the governess) – and yet a careful reading of the embrace, the incident and our interview closed on my
description reveals that it proves very little, except that recognition of all the reserves of goodness that, for his
the children are out of their beds, clearly disturbed and joke, he had been able to draw upon.
upset.
Here we see James developing one of the central themes in
! discussion point his work: the adult world’s perception of children. The
What evidence is there that Miles and Flora are governess describes Miles as glittering in the ‘gloom’. In
communicating with the ghosts? What evidence is there other words, Miles is triumphant about his being able to
that they are not? converse with the ghosts and do what he wants,
disobeying her orders. Miles’s behaviour equally may have
nothing to do with ghosts: the alternative is that he wishes

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to defy the controlling governess, for he seems to enjoy have only been pretending to be good. Mrs Grose’s
the thought of being ‘bad’. Here there is a poignancy about questions now become even more disbelieving.
Miles, the serious, isolated, sickly boy, who yearns to be
like ordinary boys, to do daring things. The governess ! discussion point
doesn’t seem able to be cross with him; she embraces him. Mrs Grose’s question is a good one: if the ghosts are real,
what do they want to get from the children?
! discussion point
What do you think Miles means when he says he was
being ‘bad’?
From Chapter XIII
What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel
From Chapter XII idea that, whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw
MORE – things terrible and unguessable and that
‘Their more than earthly beauty, their absolutely sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in the past.
unnatural goodness. It’s a game,’ I went on; ‘it’s a policy
Such things naturally left on the surface, for the time, a
and a fraud!’
chill which we vociferously denied that we felt; and we
‘On the part of little darlings –?’ had, all three, with repetition, got into such splendid
training that we went, each time, almost automatically,
‘As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as that seems!’ The
to mark the close of the incident, through the very same
very act of bringing it out really helped me to trace it –
follow it all up and piece it all together. ‘They haven’t movements. It was striking of the children, at all events,
been good – they’ve only been absent. It has been easy to to kiss me inveterately with a kind of wild irrelevance
live with them, because they’re simply leading a life of and never to fail – one or the other – of the precious
question that had helped us through many a peril.
their own. They’re not mine – they’re not ours. They’re
his and they’re hers!’ The governess’s paranoia has developed and spread,
‘Quint’s and that woman’s?’ invading her every interaction with the children. All her
dealings with them now have a sinister edge and
‘Quint’s and that woman’s. They want to get to them.’ undertone to them: the children’s affection is merely a
fraud. Their kisses are there merely to distract her from
Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study asking questions about the ghosts.
them! ‘But for what?’
! discussion point
Here we see the governess developing her theory about Is the governess descending into a form of madness here
the children, looking back upon her whole time with them or is she seeing the truth?
and seeing it as a ‘policy and a fraud’. In other words,
they’ve been in league with the ghosts all this time and

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From Chapter XIV the truth about the ghosts, or because she has become
cloying, over-affectionate, over-protective, and is
‘Look here, my dear, you know,’ he charmingly said, mothering him too much. Miles goes on to stand up to the
‘when in the world, please, am I going back to school?’ governess: he asks to go back to school and for his uncle to
come to Bly. Mrs Grose has already advised the governess
Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough, to write to her employer, asking him to intervene, but she
particularly as uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe has refused, not wanting to bother him and show that she
with which, at all interlocutors, but above all at his is dependent upon him. She wants to feel that she is in
eternal governess, he threw off intonations as if he were control of the situation.
tossing roses. There was something in them that always ! discussion point
made one ‘catch’, and I caught, at any rate, now so What are the advantages and disadvantages of boys being
effectually that I stopped as short as if one of the trees of very close to one female teacher when they are nine years
the park had fallen across the road. … I could feel in him old like Miles?
how he already, from my at first finding nothing to reply,
perceived the advantage he had gained. I was so slow to
find anything that he had plenty of time, after a minute,
to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive smile: From Chapter XV
‘You know, my dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady
ALWAYS –!’ His ‘my dear’ was constantly on his lips for Dishonored and tragic, she was all before me; but even
me, and nothing could have expressed more the exact as I fixed and, for memory, secured it, the awful image
shade of the sentiment with which I desired to inspire passed away. Dark as midnight in her black dress, her
my pupils than its fond familiarity. It was so respectfully haggard beauty and her unutterable woe, she had looked
easy. at me long enough to appear to say that her right to sit
at my table was as good as mine to sit at hers. While
But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick my own these instants lasted, indeed, I had the extraordinary
phrases! I remember that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, chill of feeling that it was I who was the intruder. It was
and I seemed to see in the beautiful face with which he as a wild protest against it that, actually addressing her
watched me how ugly and queer I looked. ‘And always – ‘You terrible, miserable woman!’ – I heard myself break
with the same lady?’ I returned. into a sound that, by the open door, rang through the
Miles clearly wishes to be away from the governess and to long passage and the empty house. She looked at me as if
back at school. We gain a sense that Miles wishes to be she heard me, but I had recovered myself and cleared the
amidst more masculine company. He says: ‘for a fellow to air. There was nothing in the room the next minute but
be with a lady ALWAYS –!’ There are two reasons why he the sunshine and a sense that I must stay.
might want to be away from her: either because she knows

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The governess’s next sighting of Miss Jessel is all the more It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed
haunting because she appears to be a sort of ‘reverse’ to me that I caught for the very first time a small faint
mirror image of the governess herself. The governess has quaver
sought, above all, to be honourable and triumphant, to
keep away the ghosts, to bring up the children properly, to of consenting consciousness – it made me drop on my
do the right thing. Miss Jessel is the opposite of this: she knees beside the bed and seize once more the chance of
is ‘dishonoured and tragic’. She has been brought down possessing him. ‘Dear little Miles, dear little Miles, if you
low by her sexual relationship with Quint, by her KNEW how I want to help you! It’s only that, it’s nothing
ghostliness, and is tragically unhappy as a consequence.
But this is, in a sense, what the governess could be: she is but that,
obviously attracted to the master of the house, has sexual and I’d rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong
desires of her own, and could easily be drawn into her own
– I’d rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles’
tragedy and disgrace. She shouts at her so strongly
because Miss Jessel sits at her table, and she the governess – oh, I brought it out now even if I SHOULD go too far –
perceives herself as a good person combating the evil of ‘I just want you to help me to save you!’ But I knew in a
the ghosts. Her shouting at the ghost ‘You terrible, moment after this that I had gone too far. The answer to
miserable woman!’ shows her determination to take on my appeal was instantaneous, but it came in the form of
the ghosts on one level. It could be another indication that an extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and
she is gradually losing her mind. The sighting prompts her
a shake of the room as great as if, in the wild wind, the
to stay and later to write to her employer as Mrs Grose
advised previously. casement had crashed in. The boy gave a loud, high
shriek, which, lost in the rest of the shock of sound,
! discussion point might have seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to
Why is this a particularly haunting point in the novella? him, a note either of jubilation or of terror. I jumped to
my feet again and was conscious of darkness. So for a
moment we remained, while I stared about me and saw
that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window
From Chapter XVII tight. ‘Why, the candle’s out!’ I then cried.

I waited a minute. ‘What happened before?’ ‘It was I who blew it, dear!’ said Miles.

He gazed up at me again. ‘Before what?’ Here we see the governess feeling that the situation is
‘Before you came back. And before you went away.’ increasingly desperate. She drops on her knees by his
bed – as if she is praying or begging before him – and
For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet states her case: ‘I just want you to help me to save you.’ The
my eyes. ‘What happened?’ phrasing is interesting here because she doesn’t say that
she wants to help him directly. She wants him to open up

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to her, to take her into his confidence about the ghosts. In ‘Lord, miss!’ My view, I was myself aware – and
other words, she needs the children to endorse the therefore I suppose my tone – had never yet reached so
narrative about the ghosts. The ‘gust of frozen air’ is a calm an assurance.
wonderfully dramatic and ambiguous moment. Is it a
ghost or merely a gust of air? And the governess’s ‘The trick’s played,’ I went on; ‘they’ve successfully
description of Miles’s shriek is fascinating: it has either worked their plan. He found the most divine little way to
‘jubilation or terror’ about it. keep me quiet while she went off.’
! discussion point ‘‘Divine’?’ Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed.
Is Miles jubilant or terrified? Does he blow the candle out
or is he covering for the ghosts? How is James increasing ‘Infernal, then!’ I almost cheerfully rejoined. ‘He has
the sense of horror and claustrophobia here? provided for himself as well. But come!’
She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. ‘You
leave him –?’
From Chapter XVIII ‘So long with Quint? Yes – I don’t mind that now.’
‘She’ll be above,’ she presently said – ‘in one of the rooms She always ended, at these moments, by getting
you haven’t searched.’ possession of my hand, and in this manner she could at
‘No; she’s at a distance.’ I had made up my mind. ‘She present still stay me. But after gasping an instant at my
has gone out.’ sudden resignation, ‘Because of your letter?’ she eagerly
brought out.
Mrs. Grose stared. ‘Without a hat?’
I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it
I naturally also looked volumes. ‘Isn’t that woman
forth, held it up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid
always without one?’
it on the great hall table. ‘Luke will take it,’ I said as I
‘She’s with HER?’ came back. I reached the house door and opened it; I was
already on the steps.
‘She’s with HER!’ I declared. ‘We must find them.’
My hand was on my friend’s arm, but she failed for the Now the governess’s desperation to catch the children
with the ghosts, to prove everything to Mrs Grose,
moment, confronted with such an account of the matter, becomes paramount. The dialogue is very tense, and the
to respond to my pressure. She communed, on the governess is increasingly unbalanced. She had to leave
contrary, on the spot, with her uneasiness. ‘And where’s Miles alone while she wrote to her employer.
Master Miles?’
! discussion point
‘Oh, HE’S with Quint. They’re in the schoolroom.’ How does James build the tension here?

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From Chapter XIX ! discussion point

How could Flora’s look at the governess be interpreted? Is
What she and I had virtually said to each other was that it defiant? Or is it dumbfounded because the little girl
pretexts were useless now. When Mrs. Grose finally got does not know what is going on?
up she kept the child’s 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 From Chapter XX
me. ‘I’ll be hanged,’ it said, ‘if I’ll speak!’
‘She’s there, you little unhappy thing – there, there,
It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder, THERE, and you see her as well as you see me!’ I had
was the first. She was struck with our bareheaded said shortly before to Mrs. Grose that she was not at
aspect. ‘Why, where are your things?’ these times a child, but an old, old woman, and that
‘Where yours are, my dear!’ I promptly returned. description of her could not have been more strikingly
confirmed than in the way in which, for all answer to
She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to
this, she simply showed me, without a concession, an
take this as an answer quite sufficient. ‘And where’s
admission, of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and
Miles?’ she went on.
deeper, of indeed suddenly quite fixed, reprobation. I was
There was something in the small valor of it that quite by this time – if I can put the whole thing at all together
finished me: these three words from her were, in a flash – more appalled at what I may properly call her manner
like the glitter of a drawn blade, the jostle of the cup that than at anything else, though it was simultaneously with
my hand, for weeks and weeks, had held high and full to this that I became aware of having Mrs. Grose also, and
the brim that now, even before speaking, I felt overflow very formidably, to reckon with. My elder companion,
in a deluge. ‘I’ll tell you if you’ll tell ME –’ I heard myself the next moment, at any rate, blotted out everything but
say, then heard the tremor in which it broke. her own flushed face and her loud, shocked protest, a
‘Well, what?’ burst of high disapproval. ‘What a dreadful turn, to be
sure, miss! Where on earth do you see anything?’
Mrs. Grose’s suspense blazed at me, but it was too late
now, and I brought the thing out handsomely. ‘Where, This is a vital moment. The description of the housekeeper is
my pet, is Miss Jessel?’ important here: she has a ‘flushed face’, and speaks with a
‘burst of high disapproval’. Finally, we see that Mrs Grose has
The moment of real confrontation has come. The no belief in the governess. Her words are very telling: ‘What a
governess asks the momentous question: does Flora know dreadful turn, to be sure, miss! Where on earth do you see
where Miss Jessel is? Notice how James describes Mrs anything?’ The metaphor of the word ‘turn’ is significant: this
Grose as holding Flora’s hand – indicating that it is Mrs is the ‘turn of the screw’, the moment of revelation, the
Grose who is the real guardian of the children. moment when the truth is revealed. Except that it isn’t!

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! discussion point Mrs Grose is either the voice of stupidity, of blindness, or

What do you think of the presentation of Mrs Grose here? of reason here. Victorian readers, believing her to be of a
What does it reveal about her? lower class, felt that she was the stupid one, not seeing
what needed to be seen: the corrupting influence of the
! ghosts upon the young children. Modern readers, on the
other hand, view Mrs Grose as the voice of reason, trying
Into this attitude Mrs. Grose immediately and violently to establish some sanity, trying to make Flora feel more
entered, breaking, even while there pierced through my stable amidst the madness. Flora then turns on the
sense of ruin a prodigious private triumph, into governess: she has a ‘mask of reprobation’. Of course, the
breathless reassurance. governess uses the word ‘mask’ because she believes Flora
to be hiding her real feelings, namely her concern that the
‘She isn’t there, little lady, and nobody’s there – and you governess knows the truth about the children’s conspiracy
never see nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel – with the ghosts. Notice how wonderfully accurately James
when poor Miss Jessel’s dead and buried? WE know, catches the words and diction of a young child: ‘I think
don’t we, love? – and she appealed, blundering in, to the you’re cruel. I don’t like you!’ If there are no ghosts, then
these short, clear sentences perfectly convey the child’s
child. ‘It’s all a mere mistake and a worry and a joke – views: she has seen the governess’s behaviour as a form of
and we’ll go home as fast as we can!’ … torture.
Flora continued to fix me with her small mask of
! discussion point
reprobation, and even at that minute I prayed God to
Mrs Grose sides with Flora here. What is the effect of this
forgive me for seeming to see that, as she stood there upon Flora, upon the governess, and upon the reader?
holding tight to our friend’s dress, her incomparable
childish beauty had suddenly failed, had quite vanished.
I’ve said it already – she was literally, she was hideously,
hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. ‘I don’t From Chapter XXI
know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never
The look she gave me with it made me jump at
HAVE. I think you’re cruel. I don’t like you!’ Then, after
possibilities. ‘You mean that, since yesterday, you HAVE
this deliverance, which might have been that of a vulgarly seen –?’
pert little girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose more
closely and buried in her skirts the dreadful little face. In She shook her head with dignity. ‘I’ve HEARD –!’
this position she produced an almost furious wail. ‘Take
‘Heard?’
me away, take me away – oh, take me away from HER!’
‘From that child – horrors! There!’ she sighed with tragic
‘From ME?’ I panted. relief. ‘On my honor, miss, she says things –!’ But at this
‘From you – from you!’ she cried. evocation she broke down; she dropped, with a sudden

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sob, upon my sofa and, as I had seen her do before, gave She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. ‘He
way to all the grief of it. stole LETTERS!’
It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let She couldn’t know my reasons for a calmness after all
myself go. ‘Oh, thank God!’ pretty shallow; so I showed them off as I might. ‘I hope
then it was to more purpose than in this case! The note,
She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a
at any rate, that I put on the table yesterday,’ I pursued,
groan. ‘‘Thank God’?’
‘will have given him so scant an advantage – for it
‘It so justifies me!’ contained only the bare demand for an interview – that
he is already much ashamed of having gone so far for so
‘It does that, miss!’
little, and that what he had on his mind last evening was
This is a wonderful moment where Mrs Grose feels bullied precisely the need of confession.’ I seemed to myself, for
and harried into saying that the governess is right about the instant, to have mastered it, to see it all. ‘Leave us,
the ghosts. This admission enables her to remove Flora leave us’ – I was already, at the door, hurrying her off.
from the governess’s company by taking her to her uncle. ‘I’ll get it out of him. He’ll meet me--he’ll confess. If he
! discussion point confesses, he’s saved. And if he’s saved –’
Do you think Flora really confessed to Mrs Grose about ‘Then YOU are?’ The dear woman kissed me on this, and
the ghosts? I took her farewell. ‘I’ll save you without him!’
she cried as she went.
!
Now convinced that Miles intercepted her letter to the
‘Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he probably will master, the governess determines to find out what she
thinks is the truth. The crucial lines are ‘I’ll get it out of
have read it and destroyed it.’
him. He’ll meet me – he’ll confess. If he confesses, he’s
‘And don’t you see anything else?’ saved. And if he’s saved–’. What is important here is that
the governess really believes that confession will lead to
I faced her a moment with a sad smile. ‘It strikes me that him being saved: her mission has taken on a religious
by this time your eyes are open even wider than mine.’ quality. She is like a priest exorcising someone. This is
somewhat ironical because she has avoided going to
They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, church, and has never explicitly shown a Christian faith
almost, to show it. ‘I make out now what he must have during the story.
done at school.’ And she gave, in her simple sharpness,
an almost droll disillusioned nod. ‘He stole!’ ! discussion point
How does James build up the tension here? Would a
I turned it over – I tried to be more judicial. ‘Well – perhaps.’ confession save Miles? What would save him?

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From Chapter XXIII There is an unhinged quality to the conversation here. The
governess admits that she has renounced her position.
‘Having to do with you?’ I asked. ‘My dear child, how can Suddenly she seems to have relinquished her role as an
I help minding? Though I’ve renounced all claim to your authority figure: she has ‘renounced all claim’ to Miles’s
company – you’re so beyond me – I at least greatly enjoy company, and is there purely to be a friend, to save him
it. What else should I stay on for?’ from himself as it were. The tension is increased because
the governess is now alone with Miles.
He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his
face, graver now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ! discussion point
ever found in it. ‘You stay on just for THAT?’ What do you think of Miles’s answers? How does James
present him here? As a victim or a tormentor?
‘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
!
needn’t surprise you.’ My voice trembled so that I felt it He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able
impossible to suppress the shake. ‘Don’t you remember still a little to bargain. ‘Very much smaller –?’
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 ‘Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me’ – oh, my work
wouldn’t do for you?’ preoccupied me, and I was offhand! – ‘if, yesterday
afternoon, from the table in the hall, you took, you know,
‘Yes, yes!’ He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, my letter.’
had a tone to master; but he was so much more
successful than I that, laughing out through his gravity, The governess now seeks to find out the truth about the
he could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. ‘Only that, I stealing of the letter. What is important to appreciate here
is James’s artistry in building up to this moment. The
think, was to get me to do something for YOU!’
discovery of a relatively trivial misdemeanour has the
‘It was partly to get you to do something,’ I conceded. weight of a truly momentous revelation: for the governess
‘But, you know, you didn’t do it.’ would be provided with proof that he is in league with the
ghosts.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said with the brightest superficial
eagerness, ‘you wanted me to tell you something.’ ! discussion point
Why does the letter become so significant in the novella?
‘That’s it. Out, straight out. What you have on your
mind, you know.’
‘Ah, then, is THAT what you’ve stayed over for?’

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 henry james – the turn of the screw a study guide by francis gilbert

From Chapter XXIV ‘Nothing, nothing,’ he sadly repeated.

My present quickened courage, however, was such that, I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. ‘So what have you
not too much to let it through, I had to shade, as it were, done with it?’
my flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at ‘I’ve burned it.’
the window, the scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait.
It was the very confidence that I might now defy him, as ‘Burned it?’ It was now or never. ‘Is that what you did at
well as the positive certitude, by this time, of the child’s school?’
unconsciousness, that made me go on. ‘What did you Oh, what this brought up! ‘At school?’
take it for?’
There is a terrible poignancy here: Miles simply wanted to
‘To see what you said about me.’ know what was being said about him. James is revealing
the extent to which the written word has a huge grip upon
‘You opened the letter?’
children’s imaginations: they wish to know what is being
‘I opened it.’ reported about them. Miles is especially keen to know how
he is presented to his uncle, whom he views as a surrogate
My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on father. The governess’s descriptions of Miles are very
Miles’s own face, in which the collapse of mockery significant. In particular, her words ‘the collapse of
showed me how complete was the ravage of uneasiness. mockery showed me how complete was the ravage of
What was prodigious was that at last, by my success, his uneasiness’ signify an important turning point. The
cheeky expression which Miles had hitherto been
sense was sealed and his communication stopped: he
presenting to the governess has ‘collapsed’, indicating that
knew that he was in presence, but knew not of what, and this is a traumatic event. He is now ravaged by
knew still less that I also was and that I did know. And ‘uneasiness’; in other words he is being destroyed by it.
what did this strain of trouble matter when my eyes Most strikingly, now that he has confessed, the ghostly
went back to the window only to see that the air was face of Quint has disappeared at the window: ‘the air was
clear again and – by my personal triumph – the influence clear again’ and ‘the influence quenched’. The governess
feels she has defeated the ghosts by extracting the truth
quenched? There was nothing there. I felt that the cause
from Miles.
was mine and that I should surely get ALL. ‘And you
found nothing!’ – I let my elation out. ! discussion point
Why is Miles drenched in sweat? Why is he ravaged by
He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. uneasiness do you think?
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing, nothing!’ I almost shouted in my joy. !

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 henry james – the turn of the screw a study guide by francis gilbert

He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had
and drew his breath, two or three times over, as if with come to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his
difficulty. He might have been standing at the bottom of being perhaps innocent. … ‘And did they repeat what you
the sea and raising his eyes to some faint green twilight. said?’ I went on after a moment.
‘Well – I said things.’
… ‘Oh, yes,’ he nevertheless replied – ‘they must have
‘Only that?’ repeated them. To those THEY liked,’ he added.
‘They thought it was enough!’ There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I
turned it over. ‘And these things came round –?’
‘To turn you out for?’
‘To the masters? Oh, yes!’ he answered very simply. ‘But
Never, truly, had a person ‘turned out’ shown so little to
I didn’t know they’d tell.’
explain it as this little person! He appeared to weigh my
question, but in a manner quite detached and almost ‘The masters? They didn’t – they’ve never told. That’s
helpless. ‘Well, I suppose I oughtn’t.’ why I ask you.’
‘But to whom did you say them?’ He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face.
‘Yes, it was too bad.’
He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped – he had
lost it. ‘I don’t know!’ ‘Too bad?’
He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his ‘What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home.’
surrender, which was indeed practically, by this time, so
I can’t name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction
complete that I
given to such a speech by such a speaker; I only know
ought to have left it there. But I was infatuated – I was that the next instant I heard myself throw off with
blind with victory, though even then the very effect that homely force: ‘Stuff and nonsense!’ But the next after
was to have brought him so much nearer was already that I must have sounded stern enough. ‘What WERE
that of added separation. ‘Was it to everyone?’ I asked. these things?’
‘No; it was only to –’ But he gave a sick little headshake. My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it
‘I don’t remember their names.’ made him avert himself again, and that movement made
ME, with a single bound and an irrepressible cry, spring
‘Were they then so many?’
straight upon him. For there again, against the glass, as if
‘No – only a few. Those I liked.’ to blight his confession and stay his answer, was the
Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but hideous author of our woe – the white face of damnation.

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 henry james – the turn of the screw a study guide by francis gilbert

Quint reappears when the governess feels that Miles is ‘Peter Quint – you devil!’ His face gave again, round the
being less than forthcoming about the things he said at room, its convulsed supplication. ‘WHERE?’
school. Quint is ‘the white face of damnation’. Again, the
religious imagery is important because it suggests that They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the
Quint’s ghost is a form of damnation for the living. In the name and his tribute to my devotion. ‘What does he
governess’s view, he damns people because he won’t let matter now, my own? – what will he EVER matter? I
them tell the truth about his world. have you,’ I launched at the beast, ‘but he has lost you
forever!’ Then, for the demonstration of my work, ‘There,
! discussion point
Why does Quint reappear again just when the governess THERE!’ I said to Miles.
felt that the ghosts had been vanquished? 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
‘Is she HERE?’ Miles panted as he caught with his sealed recovered him might have been that of catching him in
eyes the direction of my words. Then as his strange ‘she’ his fall. I caught him, yes, I held him – it may be
staggered me and, with a gasp, I echoed it, ‘Miss Jessel, imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a
Miss Jessel!’ he with a sudden fury gave me back. minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. We
I seized, stupefied, his supposition – some sequel to what were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart,
we had done to Flora, but this made me only want to dispossessed, had stopped.
show him that it was better still than that. ‘It’s not Miss The brilliantly tense ending of the novella terminates with
Jessel! But it’s at the window – straight before us. It’s Miles’s death. The scene is very ambiguous because we
THERE – the coward horror, there for the last time!’ cannot be sure whether it is the governess who has
tormented, harried and terrified Miles to death with her
At this, after a second in which his head made the talk of the ghosts, or whether the ghosts have claimed
movement of a baffled dog’s on a scent and then gave a Miles for one of their own. Miles becomes furious with the
frantic little shake for air and light, he was at me in a governess; we never really know why. The governess feels
white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly over the place and that she is combating Quint, and claims that she has Miles
missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, filled the but that Quint has lost him forever. In the light of Miles’s
death, this is hugely and tragically ironic.
room like the taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming
presence. ‘It’s HE?’ ! discussion point
I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed What was the cause of Miles’s death? Why does James
present Miles’s death in such an ambiguous fashion?
into ice to challenge him. ‘Whom do you mean by `he’?’

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Glossary
Anonymous Without, or not given, a name
Apparition Ghost
Controlling Trying to control someone in an inappropriate
way
Correspondent Journalist
Corruption Lack of integrity or honesty; use of a position
of trust for dishonest gain; being immoral, deliberately
bad
Damnation The state of being condemned to eternal
punishment in Hell
Genre Type of story, e.g. ghost story, Western etc.
Hallucination Vision, or illusory perception; a common
symptom of severe mental disorder
Hysteria State of violent mental agitation; excessive or
uncontrollable fear; neurotic disorder characterised by
violent emotional outbreaks and disturbances of sensory
and motor functions
Interrogates Questions very closely
Malign influence Bad or evil power over or effect on
someone
Morally depraved Behaving in an evil and corrupt way
Neurosis Any of various mental or emotional disorders
(e.g. hypochondria or neurasthenia) which arise from no
apparent organic lesion or change, and involve symptoms
such as insecurity, anxiety, depression and irrational fears,
but without psychotic symptoms such as delusions or
hallucinations
Neurotic Person who has neurosis; a very anxious,
mentally unstable person
Paranoia Extreme suspicion, a psychological disorder
characterised by delusions of persecution or grandeur
Poignancy a state of deeply felt distress or sorrow, of
feeling almost unbearably moved

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 henry james – the turn of the screw

Psychological Mental or emotional as opposed to

physical in nature, e.g. psychological support Study Guide Author:
Francis Gilbert
Repressed Holding back one’s true feelings, burying
feelings
Resonance A moment of truth and perception
Sacrosanct Holy, inviolable
Sexual licentiousness Being sexually abandoned, behaving Francis Gilbert has taught English
promiscuously literature in the uk for nearly two
Spiritual phenomena Ghosts, spirits decades and has published four books,
Veneer Cover, facade including the bestselling I'm A Teacher,
Unmitigated disaster A total catastrophe Get Me Out Of Here and Yob Nation.
He lives in London and currently
teaches part-time and writes. He
regularly appears on tv and radio,
commentating about education.

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NAXOS

Henry James

The Turn
YOUNG

of the Screw
A D U LT
CLASSICS

T H E
A B R I D G E D
T E X T page 1
 Contents
This is the track list for the accompanying recording. Each track is
marked in the text.

cd 1
Track 1 ................................................................................................. 5
Track 2 ................................................................................................. 8
Track 3 ................................................................................................. 9
Track 4 ................................................................................................. 11
Track 5 ................................................................................................. 13
Track 6 ................................................................................................. 14
Track 7 ................................................................................................. 16
Track 8 ................................................................................................. 18
Track 9 ................................................................................................. 20
Track 10 ............................................................................................... 22
Track 11 ............................................................................................... 24
Track 12 ............................................................................................... 26
Track 13 ............................................................................................... 29
Track 14 ............................................................................................... 30

cd 2
Track 1 ................................................................................................. 32
Track 2 ................................................................................................. 33
Track 3 ................................................................................................. 35
Track 4 ................................................................................................. 36
Track 5 ................................................................................................. 38
Track 6 ................................................................................................. 40
Track 7 ................................................................................................. 42
Track 8 ................................................................................................. 44
Track 9 ................................................................................................. 47
Track 10 ............................................................................................... 51
Track 11 ............................................................................................... 52
Track 12 ............................................................................................... 55
Track 13 ............................................................................................... 58

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 The Turn of the Screw
The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, CD 1 1
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. It was this observation that drew from
Douglas – not immediately, but later in the evening – a reply that
had the interesting consequence to which I call attention.
‘I quite agree – in regard to Griffin’s ghost, or whatever it was
– that its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age,
adds a particular touch. But it’s 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.
It’s quite too horrible.’
‘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 can’t 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
story’s written. It’s in a locked drawer – it 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.’
‘And is the record yours? You took the thing down?’
‘Nothing but the impression. I took that here’ – he tapped his
heart. ‘I’ve never lost it.’

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 henry james the turn of the screw – the abridged text

‘Then your manuscript – ?’ what took her most of all and gave her the courage she
‘Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand.’ He hung afterward showed was that he put the whole thing to her as a
fire again. ‘A woman’s. She has been dead these twenty years. kind of favor, an obligation he should gratefully incur. He had
She sent me the pages in question before she died. She was a for his town residence a big house filled with the spoils of travel
most charming person, but she was ten years older than I. She and the trophies of the chase; but it was to his country home,
was my sister’s governess,’ he quietly said. ‘She was the most an old family place in Essex, that he wished her immediately to
agreeable woman I’ve ever known in her position; she would proceed.
have been worthy of any whatever. It was long ago, and this He had been left, by the death of their parents in India,
episode was long before. I was at Trinity, and I found her at guardian to a small nephew and a small niece, children of a
home on my coming down the second summer. I was much younger, a military brother, whom he had lost two years before.
there that year – it was a beautiful one; and we had, in her off- These children were, by the strangest of chances for a man in his
hours, some strolls and talks in the garden – talks in which she position – a lone man without the right sort of experience or a
struck me as awfully clever and nice. Oh yes; don’t grin: I liked grain of patience – very heavy on his hands. The awkward thing
her extremely and am glad to this day to think she liked me, was that they had practically no other relations and that his
too. If she hadn’t she wouldn’t have told me. She had never told own affairs took up all his time. He had put them in possession
anyone. It wasn’t simply that she said so, but that I knew she of Bly, which was healthy and secure, and had placed at the head
hadn’t. I was sure; I could see. You’ll easily judge why when you of their little establishment – but below stairs only – an
hear.’ excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, whom he was sure his visitor
It appeared that the narrative he had promised to read us would like and who had formerly been maid to his mother. She
really required for a proper intelligence a few words of prologue. was now housekeeper and was also acting for the time as
Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it, that this superintendent to the little girl, of whom, without children of
narrative, from an exact transcript of my own made much later, her own, she was, by good luck, extremely fond. There were
is what I shall presently give. Poor Douglas, before his death – plenty of people to help, but of course the young lady who
when it was in sight – committed to me the manuscript that should go down as governess would be in supreme authority.
reached him on the third of these days and that, on the same There had been for the two children at first a young lady whom
spot, with immense effect, he began to read to our hushed little they had had the misfortune to lose. She had done for them
circle on the night of the fourth. quite beautifully – she was a most respectable person – till her
The written statement took up the tale at a point after it had, death, the great awkwardness of which had, precisely, left no
in a manner, begun. The fact to be in possession of was alternative but school for little Miles. He told her frankly all his
therefore that his old friend, the youngest of several daughters difficulty – that for several applicants the conditions had been
of a poor country parson, had, at the age of twenty, on taking prohibitive. Douglas explained; they were, somehow, simply
service for the first time in the schoolroom, come up to London, afraid. It sounded dull – it sounded strange; and all the more so
in trepidation, to answer in person an advertisement that had because of his main condition.’
already placed her in brief correspondence with the advertiser. ‘Which was – ?’
This prospective patron proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the ‘That she should never trouble him – but never, never: neither
prime of life, such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream or appeal nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all
an old novel, before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hampshire questions herself, receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the
vicarage. He struck her, inevitably, as gallant and splendid, but whole thing over and let him alone. She promised to do this,

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and she mentioned to me that when, for a moment, consciously starting as at the passage, before my door, of a light
disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking her for the footstep. But these fancies were not marked enough not to be
sacrifice, she already felt rewarded.’ thrown off, and it is only in the light, or the gloom, I should
‘The next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, rather say, of other and subsequent matters that they now come
he opened the faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged back to me.
album and began to read.’ I reflected that my first duty was, by the gentlest arts I could
CD 1 2 I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights contrive, to win the child into the sense of knowing me. I spent
and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. I the day with her out-of-doors; I arranged with her, to her great
suppose I had expected, or had dreaded, something so satisfaction, that it should be she, she only, who might show me
melancholy that what greeted me was a good surprise. I the place. She showed it step by step and room by room and
remember as a most pleasant impression the broad, clear front, secret by secret, with droll, delightful, childish talk about it and
its open windows and fresh curtains and the pair of maids with the result, in half an hour, of our becoming immense
looking out; I remember the lawn and the bright flowers and friends.
the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and the clustered An incident, presenting itself the second evening, deeply CD 1 3
treetops over which the rooks circled and cawed in a golden sky. disconcerted me. The postbag, that evening – it came late –
The scene had a greatness that made it a different affair from contained a letter for me, which, however, in the hand of my
my own scant home, and there immediately appeared at the employer, I found to be composed but of a few words enclosing
door, with a little girl in her hand, a civil person who dropped another, addressed to himself, with a seal still unbroken. ‘This, I
me as decent a curtsy as if I had been the mistress or a recognize, is from the headmaster, and the headmaster’s an awful
distinguished visitor. bore. Read him, please; deal with him; but mind you don’t report.
The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me Not a word. I’m off!’ I broke the seal with a great effort – so great
on the spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune a one that I was a long time coming to it; took the unopened
to have to do with her. She was the most beautiful child I had missive at last up to my room and only attacked it just before
ever seen, and I afterward wondered that my employer had not going to bed. I had better have let it wait till morning, for it gave
told me more of her. I slept little that night – I was too much me a second sleepless night. With no counsel to take, the next
excited. It was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a day, I was full of distress; and it finally got so the better of me
connection with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my that I determined to open myself at least to Mrs. Grose.
little girl, the vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more ‘What does it mean? The child’s dismissed his school.’
than anything else to do with the restlessness that, before She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then,
morning, made me several times rise and wander about my visibly, with a quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back.
room to take in the whole picture and prospect; to watch, from ‘But aren’t they all – ?’
my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look at such ‘Sent home – yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never
portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to listen, go back at all.’
while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, for the Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. ‘They won’t
possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not take him?’
without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a ‘They absolutely decline.’
moment when I believe I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; I
child; there had been another when I found myself just saw them fill with good tears. ‘What has he done?’

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‘They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I
that it should be impossible to keep him. That could have only cropped up in another place. ‘What was the lady who was here
one meaning; that he’s an injury to the others.’ before?’
‘Master Miles! Him an injury? It’s too dreadful,’ cried Mrs. ‘The last governess? She was also young and pretty – almost
Grose, ‘to say such cruel things! Why, he’s scarce ten years old.’ as young and almost as pretty, miss, even as you.’
‘Yes, yes; it would be incredible.’ ‘Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!’ I
She was evidently grateful for such a profession. ‘See him, recollect throwing off. ‘He seems to like us young and pretty!’
miss, first. Then believe it!’ I felt forthwith a new impatience to ‘Oh, he did,’ Mrs. Grose assented: ‘it was the way he liked
see him; it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next everyone!’ She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught
hours, was to deepen almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I herself up. ‘I mean that’s his way – the master’s.’
could judge, of what she had produced in me, and she followed I was struck. ‘But of whom did you speak first?’
it up with assurance. ‘You might as well believe it of the little She looked blank, but she colored. ‘Why, of him.’
lady. Bless her,’ she added the next moment – ‘Look at her!’ ‘Of the master?’
I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had ‘Of who else?’
established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I
pencil, and a copy of nice ‘round o’s,’ now presented herself to had lost my impression of her having accidentally said more
view at the open door. than she meant; and I merely asked what I wanted to know. ‘Did
The rest of the day I watched for further occasion to approach she die here?’
my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to fancy she ‘No – she went off.’
rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on the I don’t know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose’s
staircase; we went down together, and at the bottom I detained that struck me as ambiguous. ‘Went off to die?’
her, holding her there with a hand on her arm. ‘I take what you said ‘Our young lady never came back, and at the very moment I
to me at noon as a declaration that you’ve never known him to be was expecting her I heard from the master that she was dead.’
bad.’ I turned this over. ‘But of what?’
‘Oh, never known him – I don’t pretend that!’ ‘He never told me! But please, miss,’ said Mrs. Grose, ‘I must
I was upset again. ‘Then you have known him – ?’ get to my work.’
‘Yes indeed, miss, thank God!’ The hour of little Miles’s return from school approached. I CD 1 4
On reflection I accepted this. ‘You mean that a boy who never is – ?’ was a little late on the scene, and I felt, as he stood wistfully
‘Is no boy for me!’ looking out for me before the door of the inn at which the coach
‘You like them with the spirit to be naughty? So do I! But not had put him down, that I had seen him, on the instant, without
to the degree to contaminate – ’ and within, in the great glow of freshness, the same positive
‘To contaminate?’ – My big word left her at a loss. I explained fragrance of purity, in which I had, from the first moment, seen
it. ‘To corrupt.’ his little sister. He was incredibly beautiful, and Mrs. Grose had
She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an put her finger on it: everything but a sort of passion of
odd laugh. ‘Are you afraid he’ll corrupt you?’ She put the tenderness for him was swept away by his presence. What I then
question with such a bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly and there took him to my heart for was something divine that I
doubtless, to match her own, I gave way for the time to the have never found to the same degree in any child – his
apprehension of ridicule. indescribable little air of knowing nothing in the world but love.

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In the first weeks the days were long; they often, at their turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned away; that was
finest, gave me what I used to call my own hour, the hour when, all I knew.
for my pupils, teatime and bedtime having come and gone, I Was there a ‘secret’ at Bly – a mystery of Udolpho or an CD 1 5
had, before my final retirement, a small interval alone. insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected
It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour: confinement? The most singular part of it, in fact – singular as
the children were tucked away, and I had come out for my stroll. the rest had been – was the part I became, in the hall, aware of
One of the thoughts that, as I don’t in the least shrink now in meeting Mrs. Grose. It came to me straightway, under her
from noting, used to be with me in these wanderings was that it contact, that, with plain heartiness, mere relieved anxiety at my
would be as charming as a charming story suddenly to meet appearance, she knew nothing whatever that could bear upon
someone. Someone would appear there at the turn of the path the incident I had there ready for her. In the pleasant hall and
and would stand before me and smile and approve. At the end with her eyes on me, I, for a reason that I couldn’t then have
of a long June day, I stopped short on emerging from one of the phrased, achieved an inward resolution – offered a vague
plantations and coming into view of the house. What arrested pretext for my lateness and, with the plea of the beauty of the
me on the spot – and with a shock much greater than any vision night and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as soon as
had allowed for – was the sense that my imagination had, in a possible to my room.
flash, turned real. He did stand there! – But high up, beyond the The shock I had suffered must have sharpened all my senses; I
lawn and at the very top of the tower to which, on that first felt sure, at the end of three days and as the result of mere
morning, little Flora had conducted me. I can hear again, as I closer attention, that I had not been practiced upon by the
write, the intense hush in which the sounds of evening servants nor made the object of any ‘game.’ Of whatever it was
dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky, and the that I knew, nothing was known around me. There was but one
friendly hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. We were sane inference: someone had taken a liberty rather gross. The
confronted across our distance quite long enough for me to ask good thing, after all, was that we should surely see no more of
myself with intensity who then he was and to feel, as an effect him.
of my inability to say, a wonder that in a few instants more What, essentially, made nothing else much signify was simply
became intense. my charming work. Both the children had a gentleness that kept
We were too far apart to call to each other, but there was a them – how shall I express it? – almost impersonal and certainly
moment at which, at shorter range, some challenge between us, quite unpunishable. I was dazzled by their loveliness. There was
breaking the hush, would have been the right result of our a Sunday – to get on – when it rained with such force and for so
straight mutual stare. He was in one of the angles, the one away many hours that there could be no procession to church; in
from the house, very erect, as it struck me, and with both hands consequence of which, as the day declined, I had arranged with
on the ledge. So I saw him as I see the letters I form on this Mrs. Grose that, should the evening show improvement, we
page; then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the spectacle, would attend together the late service. The rain happily
he slowly changed his place – passed, looking at me hard all the stopped, and I prepared for our walk, which, through the park
while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had the and by the good road to the village, would be a matter of twenty
sharpest sense that during this transit he never took his eyes minutes. Coming downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall, I
from me, and I can see at this moment the way his hand, as he remembered a pair of gloves that had required three stitches
went, passed from one of the crenelations to the next. He and that had received them while I sat with the children at their
stopped at the other corner, but less long, and even as he tea, served on Sundays, by exception, in that cold, clean temple

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of mahogany and brass, the ‘grown-up’ dining room. The gloves ‘I know still less.’
had been dropped there, and I turned in to recover them. The ‘Have you seen him before?’
day was grey enough, but the afternoon light still lingered, and ‘Yes – once. On the old tower.’
it enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recognize, She could only look at me harder. ‘Do you mean he’s a
on a chair near the wide window, then closed, the articles I stranger?’
wanted, but to become aware of a person on the other side of ‘Oh, very much!’
the window and looking straight in. One step into the room had ‘Yet you didn’t tell me?’
sufficed; my vision was instantaneous; it was all there. The ‘No – for reasons. But now that you’ve guessed – ’
person looking straight in was the person who had already Mrs. Grose’s round eyes encountered this charge. ‘Ah, I
appeared to me. He appeared thus again with I won’t say greater haven’t guessed!’ she said very simply. ‘How can I if you don’t
distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a nearness that imagine?’
represented a forward stride in our intercourse and made me, as ‘I don’t in the very least.’
I met him, catch my breath and turn cold. His face was close to ‘You’ve seen him nowhere but on the tower?’
the glass, yet the effect of this better view was, strangely, only ‘And on this spot just now.’
to show me how intense the former had been. He remained but Mrs. Grose looked round again. ‘What was he doing on the
a few seconds – long enough to convince me he also saw and tower?’
recognized; but it was as if I had been looking at him for years ‘Only standing there and looking down at me.’
and had known him always. On the spot there came to me the ‘When was it – on the tower?’
added shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come ‘About the middle of the month. At this same hour.’
there. He had come for someone else. ‘Almost at dark,’ said Mrs. Grose.
The flash of this knowledge – for it was knowledge in the ‘Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you.’
midst of dread – produced in me the most extraordinary effect, ‘Then how did he get in?’
starting as I stood there, a sudden vibration of duty and ‘And how did he get out?’ I laughed. ‘I had no opportunity to
courage. I bounded straight out of the door again, reached that ask him! This evening, you see,’ I pursued, ‘he has not been able
of the house, got, in an instant, upon the drive, and, passing to get in.’
along the terrace as fast as I could rush, turned a corner and ‘He only peeps?’
came full in sight. But it was in sight of nothing now – my ‘I hope it will be confined to that!’ She had now let go my
visitor had vanished. hand; she turned away a little after which she added: ‘What is
CD 1 6 Round the corner of the house, Mrs. Grose loomed again into he like?’
view. ‘What in the name of goodness is the matter? Has ‘I’ve been dying to tell you. But he’s like nobody.’
anything happened? ‘Nobody?’ she echoed.
‘Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?’ ‘He has no hat.’ Then seeing in her face that she already, in
‘Through this window? Dreadful!’ this, with a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, I quickly
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve been frightened. An extraordinary man. added stroke to stroke. ‘He has red hair, very red, close-curling,
Looking in.’ and a pale face, long in shape, with straight, good features and
‘What extraordinary man?’ little, rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair. His
‘I haven’t the least idea.’ eyebrows are, somehow, darker; they look particularly arched
Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. ‘Then where is he gone?’ and as if they might move a good deal. His eyes are sharp,

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strange – awfully; but I only know clearly that they’re rather possessed me. ‘That’s whom he was looking for.’
small and very fixed. His mouth’s wide, and his lips are thin, and ‘But how do you know?’
except for his little whiskers he’s quite clean-shaven. He gives ‘I know, I know, I know!’ My exaltation grew. ‘And you know,
me a sort of sense of looking like an actor. He’s tall, active, my dear!’
erect,’ I continued, ‘but never – no, never! – a gentleman.’ She didn’t deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much
My companion’s face had blanched as I went on; her round telling as that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate: ‘What if
eyes started and her mild mouth gaped. ‘A gentleman?’ she he should see him?’
gasped, confounded, stupefied: ‘a gentleman. He?’ ‘Little Miles? That’s what he wants!’
‘You know him then?’ She looked immensely scared again. ‘The child?’
She visibly tried to hold herself. ‘But he is handsome?’ ‘Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to them.’ That
I saw the way to help her. ‘Remarkably!’ he might was an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could
‘And dressed – ?’ keep it at bay; which, moreover, as we lingered there, was what I
‘In somebody’s clothes. ‘They’re smart, but they’re not his succeeded in practically proving. I had an absolute certainty
own.’ that I should see again what I had already seen, but something
She broke into a breathless affirmative groan: ‘They’re the within me said that by offering myself bravely as the sole
master’s!’ subject of such experience, by accepting, by inviting, by
I caught it up. ‘You do know him?’ surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory victim and
She faltered but a second. ‘Quint!’ she cried. guard the tranquility of my companions. The children, in
‘Quint?’ especial, I should thus fence about and absolutely save. I recall
‘Peter Quint – his own man, his valet, when he was here!’ one of the last things I said that night to Mrs. Grose.
‘When the master was?’ ‘It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned – ’
Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together. ‘He She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. ‘His having
never wore his hat, but he did wear – well, there were waistcoats been here and the time they were with him?’
missed. They were both here – last year. Then the master went, ‘The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his
and Quint was alone. Alone with us. In charge,’ she added. history, in any way.’
‘And what became of him?’ ‘Oh, the little lady doesn’t remember. She never heard or
She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. ‘He knew.’
went, too,’ she brought out at last. I continued to think. ‘It is rather odd.’
‘Went where?’ ‘That he has never spoken of him?’
Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. ‘God knows ‘Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were “great
where! He died.’ friends”?’
‘Died?’ I almost shrieked. ‘Oh, it wasn’t him!’ Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared. ‘It
She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly was Quint’s own fancy. To play with him, I mean – spoil him.’
to utter the wonder of it. ‘Yes. Mr. Quint is dead.’ She paused a moment; then she added: ‘Quint was much too
CD 1 7 We had gone over and over every feature of what I had seen. free.’
‘He was looking for someone else, you say – someone who This gave me, straight from my vision of his face – such a face!
was not you?’ – a sudden sickness of disgust. ‘Too free with my boy?’
‘He was looking for little Miles.’ A portentous clearness now ‘Too free with everyone!’ I knew it – but the master didn’t.’

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‘And you never told him?’ We had left Miles indoors, on the red cushion of a deep window
‘Well, he didn’t like tale-bearing – he hated complaints. He seat; he had wished to finish a book, and I had been glad to
was terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people were encourage a purpose so laudable in a young man whose only
all right to him – and Quint was so clever – he was so deep. The defect was an occasional excess of the restless. His sister, on the
master believed in him and placed him here because he was contrary, had been alert to come out, and I strolled with her half
supposed not to be well and the country air so good for him. So an hour, seeking the shade, for the sun was still high and the
he had everything to say. Yes’ – she let me have it – ‘even about day exceptionally warm.
them.’ We were on the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately begun
‘Them – that creature?’ I had to smother a kind of howl. ‘And geography, the lake was the Sea of Azof.
you could bear it!’ Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the
‘No. I couldn’t – and I can’t now!’ And the poor woman burst other side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. I
into tears. had sat down with a piece of work on the old stone bench which
The limit of this evil time had arrived only when, on the dawn overlooked the pond; and in this position I began to take in
of a winter’s morning, Peter Quint was found, by a laborer going with certitude, and yet without direct vision, the presence, at a
to early work, stone dead on the road from the village: a distance, of a third person. The old trees, the thick shrubbery,
catastrophe explained – superficially at least – by a visible made a great and pleasant shade, but it was all suffused with the
wound to his head; such a wound as might have been produced brightness of the hot, still hour. There was no ambiguity in
– and as, on the final evidence, had been – by a fatal slip, in the anything; none whatever, at least, in the conviction I from one
dark and after leaving the public house, on the steepish icy moment to another found myself forming as to what I should
slope, a wrong path altogether, at the bottom of which he lay. see straight before me and across the lake as a consequence of
The icy slope, the turn mistaken at night and in liquor, raising my eyes. Of the positive identity of the apparition I
accounted for much – practically, in the end and after the would assure myself as soon as the small clock of my courage
inquest and boundless chatter, for everything; but there had should have ticked out the right second; meanwhile, with an
been matters in his life – strange passages and perils, secret effort that was already sharp enough, I transferred my eyes
disorders, vices more than suspected – that would have straight to little Flora, who, at that moment, was about ten
accounted for a good deal more. yards away. My heart had stood still for an instant with the
I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be a wonder and terror of the question whether she too would see;
credible picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days and I held my breath while I waited for what a cry from her,
literally able to find a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism what sudden innocent sign either of interest or of alarm, would
the occasion demanded of me. I was a screen – I was to stand tell me. I waited, but nothing came; then, in the first place – and
before them. The more I saw, the less they would. I began to there is something more dire in this, I feel, than in anything I
watch them in a stifled suspense, a disguised excitement that have to relate – I was determined by a sense that, within a
might well, had it continued too long, have turned to something minute, all sounds from her had previously dropped; and, in the
like madness. What saved me, as I now see, was that it turned to second, by the circumstance that, also within the minute, she
something else altogether. It didn’t last as suspense – it was had, in her play, turned her back to the water. This was her
superseded by horrible proofs. attitude when I at last looked at her – looked with the
CD 1 8 This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened confirmed conviction that we were still, together, under direct
to spend in the grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. personal notice. She had picked up a small flat piece of wood,

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which happened to have in it a little hole that had evidently them. ‘Do you mean of dislike?’
suggested to her the idea of sticking in another fragment that ‘God help us, no. Of something much worse.’
might figure as a mast and make the thing a boat. This second ‘Worse than dislike?’ – This left her indeed at a loss.
morsel, as I watched her, she was very markedly and intently ‘With determination – indescribable. With a kind of fury of
attempting to tighten in its place. My apprehension of what she intention.’
was doing sustained me so that after some seconds I felt I was I made her turn pale. ‘Intention?’
ready for more. Then I again shifted my eyes – I faced what I had ‘To get hold of her.’
to face. Mrs. Grose – her eyes just lingering on mine – gave a shudder
CD 1 9 I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can and walked to the window; and while she stood there looking
give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet out I completed my statement. ‘That’s what Flora knows.’
I still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: After a little she turned round. ‘The person was in black, you
‘They know – it’s too monstrous: they know, they know! Two say?’
hours ago, in the garden’ – I could scarce articulate – ‘Flora saw!’ ‘In mourning – rather poor, almost shabby. But – yes – with
Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the extraordinary beauty. Oh, handsome – very, very,’ I insisted;
stomach. ‘She has told you?’ she panted. ‘wonderfully handsome. But infamous.’
‘Not a word – that’s the horror. She kept it to herself! The She slowly came back to me. ‘Miss Jessel – was infamous.
child of eight, that child! I was there – I saw with my eyes: saw They were both infamous,’ she finally said.
that she was perfectly aware.’ So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found
‘Do you mean aware of him?’ absolutely a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. ‘I
‘No – of her. Another person – this time; but a figure of quite appreciate,’ I said, ‘the great decency of your not having
as unmistakable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and hitherto spoken; but the time has certainly come to give me the
dreadful – with such an air also, and such a face! – on the other whole thing.’ She appeared to assent to this, but still only in
side of the lake. I was there with the child – quiet for the hour; silence; seeing which I went on: ‘I must have it now. Of what did
and in the midst of it she came.’ she die? Come, there was something between them.’
‘Was she someone you’ve never seen?’ ‘There was everything.’
‘Never. But someone the child has. Someone you have.’ Then, ‘In spite of the difference – ?’
to show how I had thought it all out: ‘My predecessor – the one ‘Oh, of their rank, their condition’ – she brought it woefully
who died.’ out. ‘She was a lady. But him. I’ve never seen one like him. He
‘Miss Jessel?’ did what he wished.’
‘Miss Jessel. You don’t believe me?’ I pressed. ‘With her?’
‘Tell me how you know,’ she said. ‘With them all.’
‘Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked.’ It was as if now in my friend’s own eyes Miss Jessel had again
‘At you, do you mean – so wickedly?’ appeared. I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their
‘Dear me, no – I could have borne that. She gave me never a evocation of her as distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and
glance. She only fixed the child.’ I brought out with decision: ‘It must have been also what she
Mrs. Grose tried to see it. ‘Fixed her?’ wished!’
‘Ah, with such awful eyes!’ Mrs. Grose’s face signified that it had been indeed, but she
She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled said at the same time: ‘Poor woman – she paid for it!’

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‘Then you do know what she died of?’ I asked. my judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation. I couldn’t
‘No – I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat to Mrs. Grose –
enough I didn’t; but I thanked heaven she was well out of this!’ as I did there, over and over, in the small hours – that with their
‘Yet you had, then, your idea – ’ voices in the air, their pressure on one’s heart, and their
‘Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes – as to that. She fragrant faces against one’s cheek, everything fell to the ground
couldn’t have stayed. Fancy it here – for a governess! And but their incapacity and their beauty. What was it you had in
afterwards I imagined – and I still imagined. And what I mind when, in our distress, before Miles came back, over the
imagine is dreadful.’ letter from his school, you said, under my insistence, that you
‘Not so dreadful as what I do,’ I replied; on which I must have didn’t pretend for him that he had not literally ever been ‘bad’?
shown her – as I was indeed but too conscious – a front of What my friend had had in mind proved to be immensely to the
miserable defeat. It brought out again all her compassion for purpose. It was neither more nor less than the circumstance
me, and at the renewed touch of her kindness my power to that for a period of several months Quint and the boy had been
resist broke down. I burst, as I had, the other time, made her perpetually together. It was in fact the very appropriate truth
burst, into tears; she took me to her motherly breast, and my that she had ventured to criticize the propriety, to hint at the
lamentation overflowed. ‘I don’t do it!’ I sobbed in despair; ‘I incongruity, of so close an alliance, and even to go so far on the
don’t save or shield them! It’s far worse than I dreamed – subject as a frank overture to Miss Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with
they’re lost!’ a most strange manner, requested her to mind her business,
CD 1 10 What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough: there were in and the good woman had, on this, directly approached little
the matter I had put before her depths and possibilities that I Miles. What she had said to him, since I pressed, was that she
lacked resolution to sound; so that when we met once more in liked to see young gentlemen not forget their station.
the wonder of it we were of a common mind about the duty of ‘And it was his answer, for one thing, that was bad.’
resistance to extravagant fancies. We were to keep our heads if ‘And for another thing?’ I waited. ‘He repeated your words to
we should keep nothing else. Quint?’
On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course ‘No, not that. It’s just what he wouldn’t. But he denied certain
returned to my pupils, associating the right remedy for my occasions.’
dismay with that sense of their charm which I had already ‘What occasions?’
found to be a thing I could positively cultivate and which had ‘When they had been about together quite as if Quint were
never failed me yet. I had simply, in other words, plunged afresh his tutor – and a very grand one – and Miss Jessel only for the
into Flora’s special society and there become aware – it was little lady. When he had gone off with the fellow, I mean, and
almost a luxury! – that she could put her little conscious hand spent hours with him.’
straight upon the spot that ached. She had looked at me in ‘He then prevaricated about it – said he hadn’t?’ Her assent
sweet speculation and then had accused me to my face of having was clear enough to cause me to add in a moment: ‘I see. He
‘cried.’ I had supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I lied.’
could literally – for the time, at all events – rejoice, under this Lord, how I pressed her now! ‘So that you could see he knew
fathomless charity, that they had not entirely disappeared. To what was between the two wretches?’
gaze into the depths of blue of a child’s eyes and pronounce ‘I don’t know – I don’t know!’ the poor woman groaned.
their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of ‘You do know, you dear thing,’ I replied; ‘only you haven’t my
a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure dreadful boldness of mind. There was something in the boy that

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suggested to you,’ I continued, ‘that he covered and concealed grossness. It was all in the other quarter that, after a lull, the
their relation.’ grossness broke out.
‘Oh, he couldn’t prevent – ’ One evening – with nothing to lead up or to prepare it – I felt
‘Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens,’ I fell, with the cold touch of the impression that had breathed on me the
vehemence, athinking, ‘what it shows that they must, to that night of my arrival. I had not gone to bed; I sat reading by a
extent, have succeeded in making of him!’ couple of candles. I remember that the book I had in my hand
‘Ah, nothing that’s not nice now!’ Mrs. Grose lugubriously was Fielding’s Amelia; also that I was wholly awake. I recollect in
pleaded. short that, though I was deeply interested in my author, I found
‘I don’t wonder you looked queer,’ I persisted, ‘when I myself, at the turn of a page and with his spell all scattered,
mentioned to you the letter from his school!’ looking straight up from him and hard at the door of my room.
‘I doubt if I looked as queer as you!’ she retorted with homely There was a moment during which I listened, reminded of the
force. ‘And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he faint sense I had had, the first night, of there being something
such an angel now?’ undefinably astir in the house, and noted the soft breath of the
‘Yes, indeed – and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, open casement just move the half-drawn blind. I laid down my
how?’ Then I went on: ‘At all events, while he was with the man book, rose to my feet, and, taking a candle, went straight out of
–’ the room and, from the passage, on which my light made little
‘Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!’ impression, noiselessly closed and locked the door.
CD 1 11 They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally I went straight along the lobby, holding my candle high, till I
fond of me; which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a came within sight of the tall window that presided over the
graceful response in children perpetually bowed over and great turn of the staircase. At this point I precipitately found
hugged. The homage of which they were so lavish succeeded, in myself aware of three things. They were practically
truth, for my nerves, quite as well as if I never appeared to simultaneous, yet they had flashes of succession. My candle,
myself, as I may say, literally to catch them at a purpose in it. under a bold flourish, went out, and I perceived, by the
They had never, I think, wanted to do so many things for their uncovered window, that the yielding dusk of earliest morning
poor protectress; I mean – though they got their lessons better rendered it unnecessary. Without it, the next instant, I saw that
and better, which was naturally what would please her most – in there was someone on the stair. I speak of sequences, but I
the way of diverting, entertaining, surprising her; reading her required no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself for a third
passages, telling her stories, acting her charades, pouncing out encounter with Quint. The apparition had reached the landing
at her, in disguises, as animals and historical characters, and halfway up and was therefore on the spot nearest the window,
above all astonishing her by the ‘pieces’ they had secretly got by where at sight of me, it stopped short and fixed me exactly as it
heart and could interminably recite. They were extraordinarily had fixed me from the tower and from the garden. He knew me
at one, and to say that they never either quarreled or as well as I knew him; and so, in the cold, faint twilight, with a
complained is to make the note of praise coarse for their quality glimmer in the high glass and another on the polish of the oak
of sweetness. Sometimes, indeed, I perhaps came across traces stair below, we faced each other in our common intensity. He
of little understandings between them by which one of them was absolutely, on this occasion, a living, detestable, dangerous
should keep me occupied while the other slipped away. There is presence. But that was not the wonder of wonders; I reserve
a naive side, I suppose, in all diplomacy; but if my pupils this distinction for quite another circumstance: the
practiced upon me, it was surely with the minimum of circumstance that dread had unmistakably quitted me and that

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there was nothing in me there that didn’t meet and measure and only then, a little faint; and she had pattered straight over
him. to me, thrown herself upon my knee, given herself to be held
It was the dead silence of our long gaze at such close quarters with the flame of the candle full in the wonderful little face that
that gave the whole horror, huge as it was, its only note of the was still flushed with sleep. I remember closing my eyes an
unnatural. If I had met a murderer in such a place and at such instant, yieldingly, consciously, as before the excess of
an hour, we still at least would have spoken. The moment was so something beautiful that shone out of the blue of her own. ‘You
prolonged that it would have taken but little more to make me were looking for me out of the window?’ I said. ‘You thought I
doubt if even I were in life. I can’t express what followed it save might be walking in the grounds?’
by saying that the silence itself – which is indeed in a manner an ‘Well, you know, I thought someone was’ – she never
attestation of my strength – became the element into which I blanched as she smiled out that at me.
saw the figure disappear; in which I definitely saw it turn as I Oh, how I looked at her now! ‘And did you see anyone?’
might have seen the low wretch to which it had once belonged ‘Ah, no!’ she returned, almost with the full privilege of
turn on receipt of an order, and pass, with my eyes on the childish inconsequence, resentfully, though with a long
villainous back that no hunch could have more disfigured, sweetness in her little drawl of the negative.
straight down the staircase and into the darkness in which the ‘Why did you pull the curtain over the place to make me
next bend was lost. think you were still there?’
CD 1 12 Then I returned to my room. The foremost thing I saw there Flora luminously considered; after which, with her little
by the light of the candle I had left burning was that Flora’s divine smile: ‘Because I don’t like to frighten you!’
little bed was empty; and on this I caught my breath with all the You may imagine the general complexion, from that moment,
terror that, five minutes before, I had been able to resist. I of my nights. I repeatedly sat up till I didn’t know when; I
dashed at the place in which I had left her lying and over which selected moments when my roommate unmistakably slept, and,
(for the small silk counterpane and the sheets were disarranged) stealing out, took noiseless turns in the passage and even
the white curtains had been deceivingly pulled forward; then pushed as far as to where I had last met Quint. But I never met
my step, to my unutterable relief, produced an answering him there again; and I may as well say at once that I on no other
sound: I perceived an agitation of the window blind, and the occasion saw him in the house. I just missed, on the staircase,
child, ducking down, emerged rosily from the other side of it. on the other hand, a different adventure. Looking down it from
She stood there in so much of her candor and so little of her the top I once recognized the presence of a woman seated on
nightgown, with her pink bare feet and the golden glow of her one of the lower steps with her back presented to me, her body
curls. She looked intensely grave, and I had never had such a half-bowed and her head, in an attitude of woe, in her hands. I
sense of losing an advantage acquired (the thrill of which had had been there but an instant, however, when she vanished
just been so prodigious) as on my consciousness that she without looking round at me. I knew, nonetheless, exactly what
addressed me with a reproach. ‘You naughty: where have you dreadful face she had to show. Well, there continued to be
been?’ – instead of challenging her own irregularity I found plenty of call for nerve. It was precisely the first night during
myself arraigned and explaining. She herself explained, for that this series that, weary with watching, I had felt that I might
matter, with the loveliest, eagerest simplicity. She had known again without laxity lay myself down at my old hour. I slept
suddenly, as she lay there, that I was out of the room, and had immediately and, as I afterward knew, till about one o’clock; but
jumped up to see what had become of me. I had dropped, with when I woke it was to sit straight up, as completely roused as if
the joy of her reappearance, back into my chair – feeling then, a hand had shook me. I had left a light burning, but it was now

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out, and I felt an instant certainty that Flora had extinguished It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; the CD 1 13
it. This brought me to my feet and straight, in the darkness, to rigor with which I kept my pupils in sight making it often
her bed, which I found she had left. A glance at the window difficult to meet her privately, and the more as we each felt the
enlightened me further, and the striking of a match completed importance of not provoking – on the part of the servants quite
the picture. as much as on that of the children – any suspicion of a secret
The child had again got up – this time blowing out the taper, flurry or that of a discussion of mysteries.
and had again, for some purpose of observation or response, At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under
squeezed in behind the blind and was peering out into the pressure, on the terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the
night. Hidden, protected, absorbed, she evidently rested on the afternoon sun was now agreeable; and we sat there together
sill – the casement opened forward – and gave herself up. There while, before us, at a distance, but within call if we wished, the
was a great still moon to help her, and this fact had counted in children strolled to and fro in one of their most manageable
my quick decision. She was face to face with the apparition we moods. In my recital of the events of the night, I reached the
had met at the lake, and could now communicate with it as she point of what Miles had said to me when, after seeing him, at
had not then been able to do. What I, on my side, had to care for such a monstrous hour, almost on the very spot where he
was, without disturbing her, to reach, from the corridor, some happened now to be, I had gone down to bring him in; choosing
other window in the same quarter. I got to the door without her then, at the window, with a concentrated need of not alarming
hearing me; I got out of it, closed it, and listened, from the the house, rather that method than a signal more resonant. As
other side, for some sound from her. soon as I appeared in the moonlight on the terrace, he had come
There were empty rooms at Bly, and it was only a question of to me as straight as possible; on which I had taken his hand
choosing the right one. The right one suddenly presented itself without a word and led him, through the dark spaces, up the
to me as the lower one – though high above the gardens – in the staircase where Quint had so hungrily hovered for him, along
solid corner of the house that I have spoken of as the old tower. the lobby where I had listened and trembled, and so to his
I had only, after just faltering at the first chill gloom of its forsaken room.
disuse, to pass across it and unbolt as quietly as I could one of Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had
the shutters. Achieving this transit, I uncovered the glass wondered – oh, how I had wondered! – if he were groping about
without a sound and, applying my face to the pane, was able, in his little mind for something plausible and not too grotesque.
the darkness without being much less than within, to see that I It would tax his invention, certainly, and I felt, this time, over
commanded the right direction. Then I saw something more. his real embarrassment, a curious thrill of triumph. It was a
The moon made the night extraordinarily penetrable and sharp trap for the inscrutable! He couldn’t play any longer at
showed me on the lawn a person, diminished by distance, who innocence; so how the deuce would he get out of it? I was of
stood there motionless and as if fascinated, looking up to where course thoroughly kind and merciful; never, never yet had I
I had appeared – looking, that is, not so much straight at me as placed on his little shoulders hands of such tenderness as those
at something that was apparently above me. There was clearly with which, while I rested against the bed, I held him there well
another person above me – there was a person on the tower; but under fire. I had no alternative but, in form at least, to put it to
the presence on the lawn was not in the least what I had him.
conceived and had confidently hurried to meet. The presence on ‘You must tell me now – and all the truth. What did you go
the lawn – I felt sick as I made it out – was poor little Miles out for? What were you doing there?’
himself. I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful

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eyes, and the uncovering of his little teeth shine to me in the clearly have understood. The more I’ve watched and waited the
dusk. ‘If I tell you why, will you understand?’ My heart, at this, more I’ve felt that if there were nothing else to make it sure it
leaped into my mouth. Would he tell me why? I found no sound would be made so by the systematic silence of each. Never, by a
on my lips to press it, and I was aware of replying only with a slip of the tongue, have they so much as alluded to either of their
vague, repeated, grimacing nod. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘just old friends, any more than Miles has alluded to his expulsion.
exactly in order that you should do this.’ Their more than earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural
‘Do what?’ goodness. It’s a game,’ I went on; ‘it’s a policy and a fraud! They
‘Think me – for a change – bad!’ I shall never forget the haven’t been good – they’ve only been absent. It has been easy to
sweetness and gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor live with them, because they’re simply leading a life of their own.
how, on top of it, he bent forward and kissed me. It was They’re not mine – they’re not ours. They’re his and they’re hers!’
practically the end of everything. I met his kiss and I had to ‘Quint’s and that woman’s?’
make, while I folded him for a minute in my arms, the most ‘Quint’s and that woman’s. They want to get to them.’
stupendous effort not to cry. Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study them!
‘Then you didn’t undress at all?’ ‘But for what?’
He fairly glittered in the gloom. ‘Not at all. I sat up and read.’ ‘For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the
‘And when did you go down?’ pair put into them. And to ply them with that evil still, to keep
‘At midnight. When I’m bad I am bad!’ up the work of demons, is what brings the others back.’
‘I see, I see – it’s charming. But how could you be sure I would ‘They were rascals! But what can they now do?’ she pursued.
know it?’ ‘Do? They can destroy them! They don’t know, as yet, quite
‘Oh, I arranged that with Flora.’ His answers rang out with a how – but they’re trying hard. They’re seen only across, as it
readiness! ‘She was to get up and look out.’ were, and beyond – in strange places and on high places, the
‘Which is what she did do.’ tops of towers, the roofs of houses, the outside of windows, the
‘So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking at, further edge of pools; but there’s a deep design, on either side,
you also looked – you saw.’ to shorten the distance and overcome the obstacle; and the
‘While you,’ I concurred, ‘caught your death in the night air!’ success of the tempters is only a question of time. They’ve only
He literally bloomed so from his exploit that he could afford to keep to their suggestions of danger.’
radiantly to assent. ‘How otherwise should I have been bad ‘For the children to come?’
enough?’ he asked. Then, after another embrace, the incident ‘And perish in the attempt!’
and our interview closed on my recognition of all the reserves Mrs. Grose slowly got up, and I scrupulously added: ‘Unless,
of goodness that, for his joke, he had been able to draw upon. of course, we can prevent!’
CD 1 14 The particular impression I had received proved in the Standing there before me while I kept my seat, she visibly
morning light, I repeat, not quite successfully presentable to turned things over. ‘Their uncle must do the preventing. He
Mrs. Grose, though I reinforced it with the mention of still must take them away.’
another remark that he had made before we separated. ‘It all lies ‘And who’s to make him?’
in half a dozen words,’ I said to her, ‘words that really settle the She had been scanning the distance, but she now dropped on
matter. “Think, you know, what I might do!” ’ me a foolish face. ‘You, miss.’
‘The four, depend upon it, perpetually meet. If on either of ‘By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little
these last nights you had been with either child, you would nephew and niece mad?’

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‘But if they are, miss?’ you think we ought to write?’ – there was nothing like that
‘And if I am myself, you mean? That’s charming news to be inquiry, we found by experience, for carrying off an
sent to him by a governess whose prime undertaking was to awkwardness. ‘He’ of course was their uncle in Harley Street;
give him no worry.’ and we lived in much profusion of theory that he might at any
Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. ‘He moment arrive to mingle in our circle. It was impossible to have
ought to be here – he ought to help.’ given less encouragement than he had done to such a doctrine,
She didn’t know – no one knew – how proud I had been to but if we had not had the doctrine to fall back upon we should
serve him and to stick to our terms; yet she nonetheless took have deprived each other of some of our finest exhibitions.
the measure, I think, of the warning I now gave her. ‘If you Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles CD 2 2
should so lose your head as to appeal to him for me – ’ at my side and his sister, in advance of us and at Mrs. Grose’s,
She was really frightened. ‘Yes, miss?’ well in sight. It was a crisp, clear day, the first of its order for
‘I would leave, on the spot, both him and you.’ some time; the night had brought a touch of frost, and the
CD 2 1 The fact that the days passed for me without another autumn air, bright and sharp, made the church bells almost gay.
encounter ought, it would have appeared, to have done Turned out for Sunday by his uncle’s tailor, who had had a free
something toward soothing my nerves. Since the light brush, hand and a notion of pretty waistcoats and of his grand little air,
that second night on the upper landing, of the presence of a Miles’s whole title to independence, the rights of his sex and
woman at the foot of the stair, I had seen nothing, whether in situation, were so stamped upon him that if he had suddenly
or out of the house, that one had better not have seen. There struck for freedom I should have had nothing to say. I was by the
was many a corner round which I expected to come upon Quint, strangest of chances wondering how I should meet him when the
and many a situation that, in a merely sinister way, would have revolution unmistakably occurred. I call it a revolution because I
favored the appearance of Miss Jessel. The summer had turned, now see how, with the word he spoke, the curtain rose on the last
the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and act of my dreadful drama, and the catastrophe was precipitated.
had blown out half our lights. The place, with its grey sky and ‘Look here, my dear, you know,’ he charmingly said, ‘when in the
withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, world, please, am I going back to school?’
was like a theatre after the performance – all strewn with I could feel in him how he already, from my at first finding
crumpled playbills. nothing to reply, perceived the advantage he had gained. I was
What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel idea so slow to find anything that he had plenty of time, after a
that, whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw more – things minute, to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive smile:
terrible and unguessable and that sprang from the dreadful ‘You know, my dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady always – !’
passages of intercourse in the past. Such things naturally left on I remember that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed
the surface, for the time, a chill which we vociferously denied to see in the beautiful face with which he watched me how ugly
that we felt; and we had, all three, with repetition, got into such and queer I looked. ‘And always with the same lady?’ I returned.
splendid training that we went, each time, almost automatically, He neither blanched nor winked. The whole thing was
to mark the close of the incident, through the very same virtually out between us. ‘Ah, of course, she’s a jolly, “perfect”
movements. It was striking of the children, at all events, to kiss lady; but, after all, I’m a fellow, don’t you see? That’s – well,
me inveterately with a kind of wild irrelevance and never to fail getting on.’
– one or the other – of the precious question that had helped us I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly. ‘Yes,
through many a peril. ‘When do you think he will come? Don’t you’re getting on.’ Oh, but I felt helpless!

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‘And you can’t say I’ve not been awfully good, can you?’ He had got out of me that there was something I was much CD 2 3
I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I felt how much afraid of and that he should probably be able to make use of my
better it would have been to walk on, I was not yet quite able. fear to gain, for his own purpose, more freedom. My fear was of
‘No, I can’t say that, Miles.’ having to deal with the intolerable question of the grounds of
‘Except just that one night, you know – !’ his dismissal from school, for that was really but the question of
‘That one night?’ I couldn’t look as straight as he. the horrors gathered behind. That his uncle should arrive to
‘Why, when I went down – went out of the house.’ treat with me of these things was a solution that, strictly
‘Oh, yes. But I forget what you did it for.’ speaking, I ought now to have desired to bring on; but I could so
‘Forget?’ – he spoke with the sweet extravagance of childish little face the ugliness and the pain of it that I simply
reproach. ‘Why, it was to show you I could!’ procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth. The boy, to my
‘Oh, yes, you could.’ deep discomposure, was immensely in the right, was in a
‘And I can again.’ position to say to me: ‘Either you clear up with my guardian the
I felt that I might, perhaps, after all, succeed in keeping my mystery of this interruption of my studies, or you cease to
wits about me. ‘Certainly. But you won’t.’ expect me to lead with you a life that’s so unnatural for a boy.’
‘No, not that again. It was nothing.’ What was so unnatural for the particular boy I was concerned
‘It was nothing,’ I said. ‘But we must go on.’ with was this sudden revelation of a consciousness and a plan.
He resumed our walk with me, passing his hand into my arm. That was what really overcame me, what prevented my going
‘Then when am I going back? I want to see more life. I want my in. I walked round the church, hesitating, hovering; I reflected
own sort!’ that I had already, with him, hurt myself beyond repair. For the
It literally made me bound forward. ‘There are not many of first minute since his arrival I wanted to get away from him. As I
your own sort, Miles!’ I laughed. paused beneath the high east window and listened to the
He didn’t move, and he presently produced something that sounds of worship, I was taken with an impulse that might
made me drop straight down on the stone slab, as if suddenly to master me, I felt, completely should I give it the least
rest. ‘Does my uncle think what you think?’ encouragement. I might easily put an end to my predicament by
I markedly rested. ‘How do you know what I think?’ getting away altogether.
‘Ah, well, of course I don’t; for it strikes me you never tell me. I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away; I
But I mean does he know?’ came straight out of the churchyard and, thinking hard,
‘Know what, Miles?’ retraced my steps through the park. It seemed to me that by the
‘Why, the way I’m going on.’ time I reached the house I had made up my mind to cynical
‘I don’t think your uncle much cares.’ flight. I made, in my bewilderment, for the schoolroom, where
Miles, on this, stood looking at me. ‘Then don’t you think he there are objects belonging to me that I should have to take. But
can be made to?’ I opened the door to find again, in a flash, my eyes unsealed. In
‘In what way?’ the presence of what I saw I reeled straight back upon my
‘Why, by his coming down.’ resistance.
‘But who’ll get him to come down?’ Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person
‘I will!’ the boy said with extraordinary brightness and whom, without my previous experience, I should have taken at
emphasis. He gave me another look charged with that the first blush for some housemaid who might have stayed at
expression and then marched off alone into church. home to look after the place and who, availing herself of rare

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relief from observation and of the schoolroom table and my ‘I only went with you for the walk,’ I said. ‘I had then to come
pens, ink, and paper, had applied herself to the considerable back to meet a friend.’
effort of a letter to her sweetheart. There was an effort in the She showed her surprise. ‘A friend – you?’
way that, while her arms rested on the table, her hands with ‘Oh, yes, I have a couple!’ I laughed. ‘I came home, my dear,’ I
evident weariness supported her head; but at the moment I went on, ‘for a talk with Miss Jessel.’
took this in I had already become aware that, in spite of my ‘A talk! Do you mean she spoke?’
entrance, her attitude strangely persisted. Then it was – with ‘It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the
the very act of its announcing itself – that her identity flared up schoolroom.’
in a change of posture. She rose, not as if she had heard me, but ‘And what did she say?’ I can hear the good woman still, and
with an indescribable grand melancholy of indifference and the candor of her stupefaction.
detachment, and, within a dozen feet of me, stood there as my ‘That she suffers the torments – !’
vile predecessor. Dishonored and tragic, she was all before me; It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my
but even as I fixed and, for memory, secured it, the awful image picture, gape. ‘Do you mean,’ she faltered, ‘– of the lost?’
passed away. Dark as midnight in her black dress, her haggard ‘Of the lost, the damned. And that’s why, to share them – ’ I
beauty and her unutterable woe, she had looked at me long faltered myself with the horror of it.
enough to appear to say that her right to sit at my table was as But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. ‘To
good as mine to sit at hers. While these instants lasted, indeed, share them – ?’
I had the extraordinary chill of feeling that it was I who was the ‘She wants Flora.’ Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly
intruder. It was as a wild protest against it that, actually have fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held
addressing her – ‘You terrible, miserable woman!’ – I heard her there, to show I was. ‘As I’ve told you, however, it doesn’t
myself break into a sound that, by the open door, rang through matter.’
the long passage and the empty house. She looked at me as if ‘Because you’ve made up your mind? But to what?’
she heard me, but I had recovered myself and cleared the air. ‘To everything.’
There was nothing in the room the next minute but the ‘And what do you call “everything”?’
sunshine and a sense that I must stay. ‘Why, sending for their uncle.’
CD 2 4 I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would ‘Oh, miss, in pity do,’ my friend broke out.
be marked by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having ‘Yes, yes,’ I replied. ‘His uncle shall have it here from me on the
to take into account that they were dumb about my absence. spot (and before the boy himself, if necessary) that if I’m
Instead of gaily denouncing and caressing me, they made no reproached with having done nothing again about more school – ’
allusion to my having failed them, and I was left, for the time, ‘Yes, miss – ’ my companion pressed me.
on perceiving that she too said nothing, to study Mrs. Grose’s ‘Well, there’s that awful reason; the letter from his old
odd face. I did this to such purpose that I made sure they had in school.’
some way bribed her to silence; a silence that, however, I would ‘You’ll show it to the master?’
engage to break down on the first private opportunity. This ‘I ought to have done so on the instant.’
opportunity came before tea. ‘Oh, no!’ said Mrs. Grose with decision.
‘Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them – ‘I’ll put it before him,’ I went on inexorably, ‘that I can’t
so long as they were there – of course I promised. But what had undertake to work the question on behalf of a child who has
happened to you?’ been expelled – ’

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‘For we’ve never in the least known what!’ Mrs. Grose to school,’ I said, ‘if it be that that troubles you. But not to the
declared. old place – we must find another, a better. How could I know it
‘For wickedness. For what else – when he’s so clever and did trouble you, this question, when you never told me so, never
beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is spoke of it at all? You never mentioned to me one of your
he ill-natured? He’s exquisite – so it can be only that; and that masters, one of your comrades, not the least little thing that
would open up the whole thing. After all,’ I said, ‘it’s their ever happened to you at school. Never, little Miles – no, never –
uncle’s fault. If he left here such people – !’ have you given me an inkling of anything that may have
‘He didn’t really in the least know them. The fault’s mine.’ She happened there. Therefore you can fancy how much I’m in the
had turned quite pale. dark. Until you came out, that way, this morning, you had, since
‘Well, you shan’t suffer,’ I answered. the first hour I saw you, scarce even made a reference to
‘The children shan’t!’ she emphatically returned. anything in your previous life. You seemed so perfectly to accept
CD 2 5 I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The the present. I thought you wanted to go on as you are.’
weather had changed back, a great wind was abroad, and It struck me that at this he just faintly colored. He gave, at
beneath the lamp, in my room, with Flora at peace beside me, I any rate, like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of
sat for a long time before a blank sheet of paper and listened to his head. ‘I don’t – I don’t. I want to get away.’
the lash of the rain and the batter of the gusts. Finally I went ‘You’re tired of Bly?’
out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage and listened a minute ‘Oh, no, I like Bly.’
at Miles’s door. ‘Well, then – ?’
I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide ‘Oh, you know what a boy wants!’
awake, but very much at his ease. I felt that I didn’t know so well as Miles, and I took temporary
‘You weren’t asleep?’ refuge. ‘You want to go to your uncle?’
‘Not much! I lie awake and think.’ ‘My uncle must come down,’ he replied, ‘and you must
I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as completely settle things.’
he held out his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the ‘If we do,’ I returned with some spirit, ‘you may be sure it will
edge of his bed. ‘What is it,’ I asked, ‘that you think of?’ be to take you quite away.’
‘What in the world, my dear, but you?’ ‘Well, don’t you understand that that’s exactly what I’m
‘Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn’t insist on working for? You’ll have to tell him – about the way you’ve let it
that! I had so far rather you slept.’ all drop: you’ll have to tell him a tremendous lot!’
‘Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours.’ The exultation with which he uttered this helped me
I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. ‘Of what queer somehow, for the instant, to meet him rather more. ‘And how
business, Miles?’ much will you, Miles, have to tell him? There are things he’ll ask
‘Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!’ you!’
I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my He turned it over. ‘Very likely. But what things?’
glimmering taper there was light enough to show how he smiled ‘The things you’ve never told me. To make up his mind what
up at me from his pillow. to do with you. He can’t send you back – ’
‘What do you mean by all the rest?’ ‘Oh, I don’t want to go back!’ he broke in. ‘I want a new field.’
‘Oh, you know, you know!’ He said it with admirable serenity, with positive
I could say nothing for a minute. ‘Certainly you shall go back unimpeachable gaiety; and doubtless it was that very note that

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most evoked for me the poignancy, the unnatural childish letter, sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would
tragedy, of his probable reappearance at the end of three be time enough to send it before the messenger should go to the
months with all this bravado and still more dishonor. village. Meanwhile there had been, on the part of my pupils, no
My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply more brilliant, more exemplary morning. It was exactly as if
taking it with indulgent good humor. ‘Well, old lady?’ they both had at heart to gloss over any recent little friction.
‘Is there nothing – nothing at all that you want to tell me?’ They performed the dizziest feats of arithmetic, soaring quite
He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and out of my feeble range, and perpetrated, in higher spirits than
holding up his hand to look at as one had seen sick children ever, geographical and historical jokes. It was conspicuous of
look. course in Miles in particular that he appeared to wish to show
I waited a minute. ‘What happened before?’ how easily he could let me down.
He gazed up at me again. ‘Before what?’ He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as
‘Before you came back. And before you went away.’ when, after our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came
For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. round to me and asked if I shouldn’t like him, for half an hour,
‘What happened?’ to play to me. David playing to Saul could never have shown a
It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me finer sense of the occasion. He sat down at the old piano and
that I caught for the very first time a small faint quaver of played as he had never played; and if there are those who think
consenting consciousness – it made me drop on my knees he had better have been kicking a football I can only say that I
beside the bed and seize once more the chance of possessing wholly agree with them. For at the end of a time that under his
him. ‘Dear little Miles, dear little Miles, if you knew how I want influence I had quite ceased to measure, I started up with a
to help you! It’s only that, it’s nothing but that, and I’d rather strange sense of having literally slept at my post. It was after
die than give you a pain or do you a wrong – I’d rather die than luncheon, and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I hadn’t really, in
hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles’ – oh, I brought it out now the least, slept: I had only done something much worse – I had
even if I should go too far – ‘I just want you to help me to save forgotten. Where, all this time, was Flora? When I put the
you!’ But I knew in a moment after this that I had gone too far. question to Miles, he played on a minute before answering and
The answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but it came in the then could only say: ‘Why, my dear, how do I know?’ – breaking
form of an extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and moreover into a happy laugh which, immediately after, as if it
a shake of the room as great as if, in the wild wind, the were a vocal accompaniment, he prolonged into incoherent,
casement had crashed in. The boy gave a loud, high shriek, extravagant song.
which, lost in the rest of the shock of sound, might have I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; and
seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to him, a note either then, before going downstairs, I looked into several others. As
of jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my feet again and was she was nowhere about she would surely be with Mrs. Grose,
conscious of darkness. So for a moment we remained, while I whom, in the comfort of that theory, I accordingly proceeded in
stared about me and saw that the drawn curtains were unstirred quest of. I found her where I had found her the evening before,
and the window tight. ‘Why, the candle’s out!’ I then cried. but she met my quick challenge with a blank, scared ignorance.
‘It was I who blew it, dear!’ said Miles. She had only supposed that, after the repast, I had carried off
CD 2 6 The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to both the children; as to which she was quite in her right, for it
say to me quietly: ‘Have you written, miss?’ was the very first time I had allowed the little girl out of my
‘Yes – I’ve written.’ But I didn’t add – for the hour – that my sight without some special provision.

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‘She’ll be above,’ she presently said – ‘in one of the rooms you My companion stared at the vacant mooring place and then
haven’t searched.’ again across the lake. ‘Then where is it?’
‘No; she’s at a distance.’ I had made up my mind. ‘She has ‘Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to
gone out.’ go over, and then has managed to hide it.’
Mrs. Grose stared. ‘Without a hat?’ ‘All alone – that child?’
I naturally also looked volumes. ‘Isn’t that woman always ‘She’s not alone, and at such times she’s not a child: she’s an
without one?’ old, old woman.’ I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose
‘She’s with her?’ took again, into the queer element I offered her, one of her
‘She’s with her!’ I declared. ‘We must find them.’ plunges of submission; then I pointed out that the boat might
‘And where’s Master Miles?’ perfectly be in a small refuge formed by one of the recesses of
‘Oh, he’s with Quint. They’re in the schoolroom.’ the pool, an indentation masked, for the hither side, by a
‘Lord, miss!’ projection of the bank and by a clump of trees growing close to
My view, I was myself aware – and therefore I suppose my the water.
tone – had never yet reached so calm an assurance. In the course of but few minutes more we reached a point
‘The trick’s played,’ I went on; ‘they’ve successfully worked from which we found the boat to be where I had supposed it. It
their plan. He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet had been intentionally left as much as possible out of sight and
while she went off. But come!’ was tied to one of the stakes of a fence that came, just there,
She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. ‘You leave down to the brink and that had been an assistance to
him – ?’ disembarking. There was a gate in the fence, through which we
‘So long with Quint? Yes – I don’t mind that now.’ passed, and that brought us, after a trifling interval, more into
After gasping an instant at my sudden resignation, ‘Because the open. ‘There she is!’ we both exclaimed at once.
of your letter?’ she eagerly brought out. Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled
I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, as if her performance was now complete. The next thing she did,
held it up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the however, was to stoop straight down and pluck – quite as if it
great hall table. ‘Luke will take it,’ I said as I came back. I were all she was there for – a big, ugly spray of withered fern. I
reached the house door and opened it; I was already on the instantly became sure she had just come out of the copse. She
steps. waited for us, not herself taking a step, and I was conscious of
CD 2 7 We went straight to the lake. ‘You’re going to the water, Miss? the rare solemnity with which we presently approached her. She
– You think she’s in?’ smiled and smiled, and we met; but it was all done in a silence
‘She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very by this time flagrantly ominous. Mrs. Grose was the first to
great. But what I judge most likely is that she’s on the spot from break the spell: she threw herself on her knees and, drawing the
which, the other day, we saw together what I told you.’ child to her breast, clasped in a long embrace the little tender,
‘And if she is there – ’ yielding body. While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only
‘Yes?’ watch it – which I did the more intently when I saw Flora’s face
‘Then Miss Jessel is?’ peep at me over our companion’s shoulder. It was serious now –
‘Beyond a doubt. You shall see.’ the flicker had left it; but it strengthened the pang with which I
There was no trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank. at that moment envied Mrs. Grose the simplicity of her relation.
‘No, no; wait! She has taken the boat.’ Still, all this while, nothing more passed between us save that

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Flora had let her foolish fern again drop to the ground. What understand it – an inarticulate message of gratitude. She rose
she and I had virtually said to each other was that pretexts were erect on the spot my friend and I had lately quitted, and there
useless now. When Mrs. Grose finally got up she kept the child’s was not, in all the long reach of her desire, an inch of her evil
hand, so that the two were still before me; and the singular that fell short. This first vividness of vision and emotion were
reticence of our communion was even more marked in the frank things of a few seconds, during which Mrs. Grose’s dazed blink
look she launched me. ‘I’ll be hanged,’ it said, ‘if I’ll speak!’ across to where I pointed struck me as a sovereign sign that she
It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder, was too at last saw, just as it carried my own eyes precipitately to the
the first. She was struck with our bareheaded aspect. ‘Why, child. The revelation then of the manner in which Flora was
where are your things?’ affected startled me, in truth, far more than it would have done
‘Where are yours, my dear?’ I promptly returned. to find her also merely agitated, for direct dismay was of course
She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to take this not what I had expected. Prepared and on her guard as our
as an answer quite sufficient. ‘And where’s Miles?’ she went on. pursuit had actually made her, she would repress every betrayal;
There was something in the small velour of it that quite and I was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my first glimpse of
finished me. ‘I’ll tell you if you tell me – ’ I heard myself say, the particular one for which I had not allowed. To see her,
then heard the tremor in which it broke. without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to
‘Well, what?’ glance in the direction of the prodigy I announced, but only,
Mrs. Grose’s suspense blazed at me, but it was too late now, instead of that, turn at me an expression of hard, still gravity,
and I brought the thing out handsomely. ‘Where, my pet, is an expression absolutely new and unprecedented that appeared
Miss Jessel?’ to read and accuse and judge me – this was a stroke that
CD 2 8 Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was somehow converted the little girl herself into the very presence
upon us. Much as I had made of the fact that this name had that could make me quail.
never once, between us, been sounded, the quick, smitten glare ‘She’s there, you little unhappy thing – there, there, there and
with which the child’s face now received it fairly likened my you see her as well as you see me!’
breach of the silence to the smash of a pane of glass. It added to I was by this time – if I can put the whole thing at all together
the interposing cry, as if to stay the blow, that Mrs. Grose, at – more appalled at what I may properly call her manner than at
the same instant, uttered over my violence – the shriek of a anything else, though it was simultaneously with this that I
creature scared, or rather wounded, which, in turn, within a few became aware of having Mrs. Grose also, and very formidably,
seconds, was completed by a gasp of my own. I seized my to reckon with. My elder companion, the next moment, at any
colleague’s arm. ‘She’s there, she’s there!’ rate, blotted out everything but her own flushed face and her
Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as loud, shocked protest, a burst of high disapproval.
she had stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the ‘What a dreadful turn, to be sure, miss! Where on earth do
first feeling now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having you see anything?’
brought on a proof. She was there, and I was justified; she was I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she
there, and I was neither cruel nor mad. She was there for poor spoke the hideous plain presence stood undimmed and
scared Mrs. Grose, but she was there most for Flora; and no undaunted. It had already lasted a minute, and it lasted while I
moment of my monstrous time was perhaps so extraordinary as continued, seizing my colleague, quite thrusting her at it and
that in which I consciously threw out to her – with the sense presenting her to it, to insist with my pointing hand. ‘You don’t
that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch and see her exactly as we see? – You mean to say you don’t now –

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now? She’s as big as a blazing fire! Only look, dearest woman, chilling and piercing my trouble, had made me understand that
look– !’ She looked, even as I did, and gave me, with her deep I must have thrown myself, on my face, on the ground and
groan of negation, repulsion, compassion – the mixture with given way to a wildness of grief. I must have lain there long and
her pity of her relief at her exemption – a sense, touching to me cried and sobbed, for when I raised my head the day was almost
even then, that she would have backed me up if she could. I done. I got up and looked a moment, through the twilight, at
might well have needed that, for with this hard blow of the the grey pool and its blank, haunted edge, and then I took, back
proof that her eyes were hopelessly sealed I felt my own to the house, my dreary and difficult course. When I reached the
situation horribly crumble, I felt – I saw – my livid predecessor gate in the fence the boat, to my surprise, was gone, so that I
press, from her position, on my defeat, and I was conscious, had a fresh reflection to make on Flora’s extraordinary
more than all, of what I should have from this instant to deal command of the situation. She had passed that night, by the
with in the astounding little attitude of Flora. Into this attitude most tacit, and I should add, were not the word so grotesque a
Mrs. Grose immediately and violently entered, breaking, even false note, the happiest of arrangements, with Mrs. Grose.
while there pierced through my sense of ruin a prodigious Before a new day, in my room, had fully broken, my eyes CD 2 9
private triumph, into breathless reassurance. opened to Mrs. Grose, who had come to my bedside with worse
‘She isn’t there, little lady, and nobody’s there – and you news. Flora was so markedly feverish that an illness was
never see nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel – when perhaps at hand; she had passed a night of extreme unrest, a
poor Miss Jessel’s dead and buried? We know, don’t we, love?’ – night agitated above all by fears that had for their subject not in
And she appealed, blundering on, to the child. ‘It’s all a mere the least her former, but wholly her present, governess. It was
mistake and a worry and a joke – and we can all go home as fast not against the possible re-entrance of Miss Jessel on the scene
as we can!’ that she protested – it was conspicuously and passionately
Flora continued to fix me with her small mask of reprobation, against mine. I was promptly on my feet of course, and with an
and even at that minute I prayed God to forgive me for seeming immense deal to ask; the more that my friend had discernibly
to see that, as she stood there holding tight to our friend’s now girded her loins to meet me once more. This I felt as soon
dress, her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly failed, as I had put to her the question of her sense of the child’s
had quite vanished. I’ve said it already – she was literally, she sincerity as against my own. ‘She persists in denying to you that
was hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. she saw, or has ever seen, anything?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I My visitor’s trouble, truly, was great. ‘Ah, miss, it isn’t a
never have I think you’re cruel. I don’t like you!’ Then, after this matter on which I can push her! Yet it isn’t either, I must say, as
deliverance, which might have been that of a vulgarly pert little if I much needed to. It has made her, every inch of her, quite
girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose more closely and old.’
buried in her skirts the dreadful little face. In this position she ‘I see – I see. Has she said to you since yesterday – except to
produced an almost furious wail. ‘Take me away, take me away – repudiate her familiarity with anything so dreadful – a single
oh, take me away from her!’ other word about Miss Jessel?’
‘From me?’ I panted. ‘Not one, miss. And of course you know,’ my friend added, ‘I
‘From you – from you!’ she cried took it from her, by the lake, that, just then and there at least,
Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no there was nobody.’
subsequent memory. I only know that at the end of, I suppose, a ‘Rather! And, naturally, you take it from her still.’
quarter of an hour, an odorous dampness and roughness, ‘I don’t contradict her. What else can I do?’

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‘Nothing in the world! You’ve the cleverest little person to more time, a day or two – really to bring it out. He’ll then be on
deal with. They’ve made them – their two friends, I mean – still my side – of which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I
cleverer even than nature did; for it was wondrous material to shall only fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by
play on! Flora has now her grievance, and she’ll work it to the doing, on your arrival in town, whatever you may have found
end. What Flora wants, of course, is to get rid of me.’ possible.’
My companion bravely concurred. ‘Never again to so much as She put out her hand to me as a pledge. ‘I’ll go – I’ll go. I’ll go
look at you.’ this morning. Your idea’s the right one. I myself, miss – ’
‘So that’s what you’ve come to me now for,’ I asked, ‘is to ‘Well?’
speed me on my way?’ Before she had time to reply, however, I ‘I can’t stay.’
had her in check. ‘I’ve a better idea – the result of my The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities.
reflections. My going would seem the right thing, and on ‘You mean that, since yesterday, you have seen – ?’
Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet that won’t do. It’s you who She shook her head with dignity. ‘I’ve heard – !’
must go. You must take Flora.’ ‘Heard?’
My visitor, at this, did speculate. ‘But where in the world – ?’ ‘From that child – horrors! There!’ she sighed with tragic
‘Away from here. Away from them. Away, even most of all, relief. ‘On my honor, miss, she says things – !’ But at this
now, from me. Straight to her uncle.’ evocation she broke down; she dropped, with a sudden sob,
‘Only to tell on you – ?’ upon my sofa and, as I had seen her do before, gave way to all
‘No, not “only”! To leave me, in addition, with my remedy.’ the grief of it.
She was still vague. ‘And what is your remedy?’ It was in quite another manner that I, for my part, let myself
‘Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miles’s.’ go. ‘Oh, thank God!’
She looked at me hard. ‘Do you think he – ?’ She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a groan.
‘Won’t, if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still ‘“Thank God”?’
to think it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his sister as ‘It so justifies me!’
soon as possible and leave me with him alone. ‘It does that, miss!’
‘Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman?’ I couldn’t have desired more emphasis; I just hesitated. ‘She’s
‘I’m not sure of anything but you. But I have, since last so horrible?’
evening, a new hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. ‘Really
do believe that – poor little exquisite wretch! – he wants to shocking.’
speak. Last evening, in the firelight and the silence, he sat with ‘And about me?’
me for two hours as if it were just coming.’ ‘About you, miss – since you must have it. It’s beyond
Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the grey, everything, for a young lady; I can’t think wherever she must
gathering day. ‘And did it come?’ have picked up – ’
‘No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didn’t, and it was ‘The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then!’ I broke in
without a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion to with a laugh that was doubtless significant enough. It only, in
his sister’s condition and absence that we at last kissed for good truth, left my friend still more grave. ‘Well, perhaps I ought to also
night. All the same,’ I continued, ‘I can’t, if her uncle sees her, – since I’ve heard some of it before! Yet I can’t bear it,’ the poor
consent to his seeing her brother without my having given the woman went on while, with the same movement, she glanced, on
boy – and most of all because things have got so bad – a little my dressing table, at the face of my watch. ‘But I must go back.’

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I kept her, however. ‘Ah, if you can’t bear it – !’ it all. ‘Leave us, leave us’ – I was already, at the door, hurrying
‘How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just for that: to get her off. ‘I’ll get it out of him. He’ll meet me – he’ll confess. If he
her away. Far from this,’ she pursued, ‘far from them – ’ confesses, he’s saved. And if he’s saved– ’
‘She may be different? She may be free?’ I seized her almost ‘Then you are?’ The dear woman kissed me on this, and I took
with joy. ‘Then, in spite of yesterday, you believe – ’ her farewell. ‘I’ll save you without him!’ she cried as she went.
‘In such doings?’ Her simple description of them required, in Now I was, I said to myself, face to face with the elements, CD 2 10
the light of her expression, to be carried no further, and she and for much of the rest of the day, while I fought my weakness,
gave me the whole thing as she had never done. ‘I believe.’ I could consider that I had been supremely rash. It was a tighter
Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder: if I place still than I had yet turned round in; all the more that, for
might continue sure of that I could care but little what else the first time, I could see in the aspect of others a confused
happened. On the point of taking leave of her, nonetheless, I reflection of the crisis. What had happened naturally caused
was to some extent embarrassed. ‘There’s one thing, of course – them all to stare; there was too little of the explained, throw out
it occurs to me – to remember. My letter, giving the alarm, will whatever we might, in the suddenness of my colleague’s act.
have reached town before you.’ The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, till
I now perceived still more how she had been beating about dinner, little Miles himself. Yet, wasn’t there light in the fact
the bush and how weary at last it had made her. ‘Your letter which, as we shared our solitude, broke out with a specious
won’t have got there. Your letter never went.’ glitter it had never yet quite worn? – The fact that (opportunity
‘What then became of it?’ aiding, precious opportunity which had now come) it would be
‘Goodness knows! Master Miles – ’ preposterous, with a child so endowed, to forego the help one
‘Do you mean he took it?’ I gasped. might wrest from absolute intelligence? What had his
She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. ‘I mean that I intelligence been given him for but to save him? Mightn’t one,
saw yesterday, when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasn’t to reach his mind, risk the stretch of an angular arm over his
where you had put it. Later in the evening I had the chance to character? It was as if, when we were face to face in the dining
question Luke, and he declared that he had neither noticed nor room, he had literally shown me the way. The roast mutton was
touched it.’ on the table, and I had dispensed with attendance. Miles, before
‘If Miles took it instead he probably will have read it and he sat down, stood a moment with his hands in his pockets and
destroyed it.’ looked at the joint, on which he seemed on the point of passing
‘And don’t you see anything else?’ some humorous judgment. But what he presently produced was:
I faced her a moment with a sad smile. ‘It strikes me that by ‘I say, my dear, is she really very awfully ill?’
this time your eyes are open even wider than mine.’ ‘Little Flora? Not so bad but that she’ll presently be better.
They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, almost, London will set her up. Bly has ceased to agree with her. Come
to show it. ‘I make out now what he must have done at school.’ here and take your mutton.’
And she gave, in her simple sharpness, an almost droll He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to his seat,
disillusioned nod. ‘He stole!’ and, when he was established, went on. ‘Did Bly disagree with
I turned it over – I tried to be more judicial. ‘Well – perhaps.’ her so terribly suddenly?’
She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. ‘He stole ‘Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming
letters!’ on.’
I seemed to myself, for the instant, to have mastered it, to see ‘Then why didn’t you get her off before?’

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‘Before what?’ of November. The frames and squares of the great window were
‘Before she became too ill to travel.’ a kind of image, for him, of a kind of failure. I felt that I saw
I found myself prompt. ‘She’s not too ill to travel: she only him, at any rate, shut in or shut out. He was admirable, but not
might have become so if she had stayed. This was just the comfortable: I took it in with a throb of hope. Wasn’t he
moment to seize. The journey will dissipate the influence’ – oh, I looking, through the haunted pane, for something he couldn’t
was grand! – ‘and carry it off.’ see? – And wasn’t it the first time in the whole business that he
‘I see, I see’ – Miles, for that matter, was grand, too. He had known such a lapse? The first, the very first: I found it a
settled to his repast with the charming little ‘table manner’ splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he watched
that, from the day of his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness himself; he had been anxious all day and, even while in his usual
of admonition. Whatever he had been driven from school for, it sweet little manner he sat at table, had needed all his small
was not for ugly feeding. He was irreproachable, as always, strange genius to give it a gloss. When he at last turned round
today; but he was unmistakably more conscious. He was to meet me, it was almost as if this genius had succumbed.
discernibly trying to take for granted more things than he ‘Well, I think I’m glad Bly agrees with me!’
found, without assistance, quite easy; and he dropped into ‘You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four
peaceful silence while he felt his situation. Our meal was of the hours, a good deal more of it than for some time before. I hope,’
briefest – mine a vain pretence, and I had the things I went on bravely, ‘that you’ve been enjoying yourself.’
immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again ‘Oh, yes, I’ve been ever so far; all round about – miles and
with his hands in his little pockets and his back to me – stood miles away. I’ve never been so free. Nothing could be more
and looked out of the wide window through which, that other charming than the way you take it, for of course if we’re all
day, I had seen what pulled me up. We continued silent while alone together now it’s you that are alone most. But I hope,’ he
the maid was with us – as silent, it whimsically occurred to me, threw in, ‘you don’t particularly mind!’
as some young couple who, on their wedding journey, at the inn, ‘Having to do with you?’ I asked. ‘My dear child, how can I
feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned round only help minding? Though I’ve renounced all claim to your company
when the waiter had left us. ‘Well – so we’re alone!’ – you’re so beyond me – I at least greatly enjoy it. What else
CD 2 11 ‘Oh, more or less.’ I fancy my smile was pale. ‘Not absolutely. should I stay on for?’
We shouldn’t like that!’ I went on. He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face,
‘No – I suppose we shouldn’t. Of course we have the others.’ graver now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in
‘We have the others – we have indeed the others,’ I concurred. it. ‘You stay on just for that?’
‘Yet even though we have them,’ he returned, still with his ‘Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous
hands in his pockets and planted there in front of me, ‘they interest I take in you till something can be done for you that
don’t much count, do they?’ may be more worth your while. That needn’t surprise you.’ My
I made the best of it, but I felt wan. ‘It depends on what you voice trembled so that I felt it impossible to suppress the shake.
call “much”!’ ‘Don’t you remember how I told you, when I came and sat on
‘Yes’ – with all accommodation – ‘everything depends!’ On your bed the night of the storm, that there was nothing in the
this, however, he faced to the window again and presently world I wouldn’t do for you?’
reached it with his vague, restless, cogitating step. He remained ‘Yes, yes!’ He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had
there awhile, with his forehead against the glass, in a tone to master; but he was so much more successful than I
contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the dull things that, laughing out through his gravity, he could pretend we were

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pleasantly jesting. ‘Only that, I think, was to get me to do I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt
something for you!’ proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made
‘It was partly to get you to do something,’ I conceded. ‘But, up my truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting.
you know, you didn’t do it.’ ‘Well, then, go to Luke, and I’ll wait for what you promise. Only,
‘Oh, yes,’ he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, ‘you in return for that, satisfy, before you leave me, one very much
wanted me to tell you something.’ smaller request.’
‘That’s it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able
know.’ still a little to bargain. ‘Very much smaller – ?’
‘Ah, then, is that what you’ve stayed over for?’ ‘Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me if, yesterday
He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the afternoon, from the table in the hall, you took, you know, my
finest little quiver of resentful passion; but I can’t begin to letter.’
express the effect upon me of an implication of surrender even My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from CD 2 12
so faint. It was as if what I had yearned for had come at last only something that I can describe only as a fierce split of my
to astonish me. ‘Well, yes – I may as well make a clean breast of attention – a stroke that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced
it. It was precisely for that.’ me to the mere blind movement of getting hold of him, drawing
He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of him close, and, while I just fell for support against the nearest
repudiating the assumption on which my action had been piece of furniture, instinctively keeping him with his back to the
founded; but what he finally said was: ‘Do you mean now – window. The appearance was full upon us that I had already had
here?’ to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel
‘There couldn’t be a better place or time.’ He looked round before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, from outside, he
him uneasily, and I had the rare – oh, the queer! – impression of had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to the
the very first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the
immediate fear. I heard myself the next instant so gentle as to room his white face of damnation. It represents but grossly
be almost grotesque. ‘You want so to go out again?’ what took place within me at the sight to say that on the second
‘Awfully!’ He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little my decision was made; yet I believe that no woman so
bravery of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. So overwhelmed ever in so short a time recovered her grasp of the
we circled about, with terrors and scruples, like fighters not act. It came to me in the very horror of the immediate presence
daring to close. But it was for each other we feared! That kept us that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to
a little longer suspended and unbruised. ‘I’ll tell you everything,’ keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration – I can call it by
Miles said – ‘I mean I’ll tell you anything you like. You’ll stay on no other name – was that I felt how voluntarily, how
with me, and we shall both be all right, and I will tell you – I transcendently, I might. It was like fighting with a demon for a
will. But not now.’ human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the
‘Why not now?’ human soul – held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm’s
My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more length – had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish
at his window in a silence during which, between us, you might forehead. The face that was close to mine was as white as the
have heard a pin drop. Then he was before me again with the air face against the glass, and out of it presently came a sound, not
of a person for whom, outside, someone who had frankly to be low nor weak, but as if from much further away, that I drank
reckoned with was waiting. ‘I have to see Luke.’ like a waft of fragrance.

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‘Yes – I took it.’ Oh, what this brought up! ‘At school?’
At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and ‘Did you take letters? – Or other things?’
while I held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden ‘Other things?’ He appeared now to be thinking of something
fever of his little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I far off and that reached him only through the pressure of his
kept my eyes on the thing at the window and saw it move and anxiety. Yet it did reach him. ‘Did I steal?’
shift its posture. I have likened it to a sentinel, but its slow ‘Was it for that you mightn’t go back?’
wheel, for a moment, was rather the prowl of a baffled beast. The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. ‘Did
My present quickened courage, however, was such that, not too you know I mightn’t go back?’
much to let it through, I had to shade, as it were, my flame. ‘I know everything.’
Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at the window, the He gave me at this the longest and strangest look.
scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the very ‘Everything?’
confidence that I might now defy him, as well as the positive ‘Everything. Therefore did you – ?’ But I couldn’t say it again.
certitude, by this time, of the child’s unconsciousness, that Miles could, very simply. ‘No. I didn’t steal.’
made me go on. ‘What did you take it for?’ ‘What then did you do?’
‘To see what you said about me.’ He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and
‘You opened the letter?’ drew his breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He
‘I opened it.’ might have been standing at the bottom of the sea and raising
My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miles’s his eyes to some faint green twilight. ‘Well – I said things.’
own face, in which the collapse of mockery showed me how ‘Only that?’
complete was the ravage of uneasiness. What was prodigious ‘They thought it was enough!’
was that at last, by my success, his sense was sealed and his ‘To turn you out for?’
communication stopped: he knew that he was in presence, but He appeared to weigh my question, but in a manner quite
knew not of what, and knew still less that I also was and that I detached and almost helpless. ‘Well, I suppose I oughtn’t.’
did know. And what did this strain of trouble matter when my ‘But to whom did you say them?’
eyes went back to the window only to see that the air was clear He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped – he had lost
again and – by my personal triumph – the influence quenched? it. ‘I don’t know!’
There was nothing there. I felt that the cause was mine and that He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender,
I should surely get all. ‘And you found nothing!’ – I let my which was indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I
elation out. ought to have left it there. But I was infatuated – I was blind
He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. with victory, though even then the very effect that was to have
‘Nothing.’ brought him so much nearer was already that of added
‘Nothing, nothing!’ I almost shouted in my joy. separation. ‘Was it to everyone?’ I asked.
‘Nothing, nothing,’ he sadly repeated. ‘No; it was only to – ’ But he gave a sick little headshake. ‘I
I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. ‘So what have you done don’t remember their names.’
with it?’ ‘Were they then so many?’
‘I’ve burned it.’ ‘No – only a few. Those I liked.’
‘Burned it?’ It was now or never. ‘Is that what you did at Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a
school?’ darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out

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of my very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps overwhelming presence. ‘It’s he?’
innocent. I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into
He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. ‘Yes, it ice to challenge him. ‘Whom do you mean by “he”?’
was too bad.’ ‘Peter Quint – you devil!’ His face gave again, round the room,
‘Too bad?’ its convulsed supplication. ‘Where?’
‘What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home.’ They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name
The next instant I heard myself throw off with homely force: and his tribute to my devotion. ‘What does he matter now, my
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ But the next after that I must have own? – What will he ever matter? I have you,’ I launched at the
sounded stern enough. ‘What were these things?’ beast, ‘but he has lost you forever!’ Then, for the demonstration
My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it of my work, ‘There, there!’ I said to Miles.
made him avert himself again, and that movement made me, But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again,
with a single bound and an irrepressible cry, spring straight and seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so
upon him. For there again, against the glass, as if to blight his proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss,
confession and stay his answer, was the hideous author of our and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that
woe – the white face of damnation. of catching him in his fall. I caught him, yes, I held him – it may
CD 2 13 I felt a sick swim at the drop of my victory and all the return be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I
of my battle, so that the wildness of my veritable leap only began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with
served as a great betrayal. I saw him, from the midst of my act, the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped.
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 supposition – some sequel to what we
had done to Flora, but this made me only want to show him
that it was better still than that. ‘It’s not Miss Jessel! But it’s at
the window – straight before us. It’s there – the coward horror,
there for the last time!’
At this, after a second in which his head made the movement
of a baffled dog’s 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,

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NAXOS

Henry James

The Turn
YOUNG

of the Screw
A D U LT
CLASSICS

T H E
U N A B R I D G E D
T E X T page 1
 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 occasion – an 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 Douglas – not
immediately, but later in the evening – a 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 agree – in regard to Griffin’s ghost, or whatever it was –
that its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, adds a
particular touch. But it’s 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 – ?’

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‘We say, of course,’ somebody exclaimed, ‘that they give two fire again. ‘A woman’s. She has been dead these twenty years. She
turns! Also that we want to hear about them.’ sent me the pages in question before she died.’ They were all
I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to listening now, and of course there was somebody to be arch, or at
present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in any rate to draw the inference. But if he put the inference by
his pockets. ‘Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It’s quite too without a smile it was also without irritation. ‘She was a most
horrible.’ This, naturally, was declared by several voices to give the charming person, but she was ten years older than I. She was my
thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his sister’s governess,’ he quietly said. ‘She was the most agreeable
triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going on: ‘It’s woman I’ve ever known in her position; she would have been
beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it.’ worthy of any whatever. It was long ago, and this episode was
‘For sheer terror?’ I remember asking. long before. I was at Trinity, and I found her at home on my
He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a coming down the second summer. I was much there that year – it
loss how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a was a beautiful one; and we had, in her off-hours, some strolls
little wincing grimace. ‘For dreadful – dreadfulness!’ and talks in the garden – talks in which she struck me as awfully
‘Oh, how delicious!’ cried one of the women. clever and nice. Oh yes; don’t grin: I liked her extremely and am
He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of glad to this day to think she liked me, too. If she hadn’t she
me, he saw what he spoke of. ‘For general uncanny ugliness and wouldn’t have told me. She had never told anyone. It wasn’t
horror and pain.’ simply that she said so, but that I knew she hadn’t. I was sure; I
‘Well then,’ I said, ‘just sit right down and begin.’ could see. You’ll easily judge why when you hear.’
He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it an ‘Because the thing had been such a scare?’
instant. Then as he faced us again: ‘I can’t begin. I shall have to He continued to fix me. ‘You’ll easily judge,’ he repeated:
send to town.’ There was a unanimous groan at this, and much ‘YOU will.’
reproach; after which, in his preoccupied way, he explained. ‘The I fixed him, too. ‘I see. She was in love.’
story’s written. It’s in a locked drawer – it has not been out for He laughed for the first time. ‘You ARE acute. Yes, she was in
years. I could write to my man and enclose the key; he could love. That is, she had been. That came out – she couldn’t tell her
send down the packet as he finds it.’ It was to me in particular story without its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but
that he appeared to propound this – appeared almost to appeal neither of us spoke of it. I remember the time and the place –
for aid not to hesitate. He had broken a thickness of ice, the the corner of the lawn, the shade of the great beeches and the
formation of many a winter; had had his reasons for a long long, hot summer afternoon. It wasn’t a scene for a shudder;
silence. The others resented postponement, but it was just his but oh – !’ He quitted the fire and dropped back into his chair.
scruples that charmed me. I adjured him to write by the first ‘You’ll receive the packet Thursday morning?’ I inquired.
post and to agree with us for an early hearing; then I asked him ‘Probably not till the second post.’
if the experience in question had been his own. To this his ‘Well then; after dinner – ’
answer was prompt. ‘Oh, thank God, no!’ ‘You’ll all meet me here?’ He looked us round again. ‘Isn’t
‘And is the record yours? You took the thing down?’ anybody going?’ It was almost the tone of hope.
‘Nothing but the impression. I took that HERE’ – he tapped ‘Everybody will stay!’
his heart. ‘I’ve never lost it.’ ‘I will’ – and ‘I will!’ cried the ladies whose departure had been
‘Then your manuscript – ?’ fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more
‘Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand.’ He hung light. ‘Who was it she was in love with?’

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‘The story will tell,’ I took upon myself to reply. him on the third of these days and that, on the same spot, with
‘Oh, I can’t wait for the story!’ immense effect, he began to read to our hushed little circle on
‘The story WON’T tell,’ said Douglas; ‘not in any literal, vulgar the night of the fourth. The departing ladies who had said they
way.’ would stay didn’t, of course, thank heaven, stay: they departed,
‘More’s the pity, then. That’s the only way I ever understand.’ in consequence of arrangements made, in a rage of curiosity, as
‘Won’t YOU tell, Douglas?’ somebody else inquired. they professed, produced by the touches with which he had
He sprang to his feet again. ‘Yes – tomorrow. Now I must go already worked us up. But that only made his little final
to bed. Good night.’ And quickly catching up a candlestick, he auditory more compact and select, kept it, round the hearth,
left us slightly bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall subject to a common thrill.
we heard his step on the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. The first of these touches conveyed that the written
‘Well, if I don’t know who she was in love with, I know who HE statement took up the tale at a point after it had, in a manner,
was.’ begun. The fact to be in possession of was therefore that his old
‘She was ten years older,’ said her husband. friend, the youngest of several daughters of a poor country
‘Raison de plus – at that age! But it’s rather nice, his long parson, had, at the age of twenty, on taking service for the first
reticence.’ time in the schoolroom, come up to London, in trepidation, to
‘Forty years!’ Griffin put in. answer in person an advertisement that had already placed her
‘With this outbreak at last.’ in brief correspondence with the advertiser. This person proved,
‘The outbreak,’ I returned, ‘will make a tremendous occasion on her presenting herself, for judgment, at a house in Harley
of Thursday night;’ and everyone so agreed with me that, in the Street, that impressed her as vast and imposing – this
light of it, we lost all attention for everything else. The last prospective patron proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime
story, however incomplete and like the mere opening of a serial, of life, such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old
had been told; we handshook and “candlestuck,” as somebody novel, before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hampshire
said, and went to bed. vicarage. One could easily fix his type; it never, happily, dies out.
I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by He was handsome and bold and pleasant, offhand and gay and
the first post, gone off to his London apartments; but in spite of kind. He struck her, inevitably, as gallant and splendid, but
– or perhaps just on account of – the eventual diffusion of this what took her most of all and gave her the courage she
knowledge we quite let him alone till after dinner, till such an afterward showed was that he put the whole thing to her as a
hour of the evening, in fact, as might best accord with the kind kind of favor, an obligation he should gratefully incur. She
of emotion on which our hopes were fixed. Then he became as conceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant – saw him all
communicative as we could desire and indeed gave us his best in a glow of high fashion, of good looks, of expensive habits, of
reason for being so. We had it from him again before the fire in charming ways with women. He had for his own town residence
the hall, as we had had our mild wonders of the previous night. a big house filled with the spoils of travel and the trophies of
It appeared that the narrative he had promised to read us really the chase; but it was to his country home, an old family place in
required for a proper intelligence a few words of prologue. Let Essex, that he wished her immediately to proceed.
me say here distinctly, to have done with it, that this narrative, He had been left, by the death of their parents in India,
from an exact transcript of my own made much later, is what I guardian to a small nephew and a small niece, children of a
shall presently give. Poor Douglas, before his death – when it younger, a military brother, whom he had lost two years before.
was in sight – committed to me the manuscript that reached These children were, by the strangest of chances for a man in his

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position – a lone man without the right sort of experience or a ‘Excuse me – I thought that was just what you ARE doing.’
grain of patience – very heavily on his hands. It had all been a ‘In her successor’s place,’ I suggested, ‘I should have wished to
great worry and, on his own part doubtless, a series of blunders, learn if the office brought with it – ’
but he immensely pitied the poor chicks and had done all he ‘Necessary danger to life?’ Douglas completed my thought.
could; had in particular sent them down to his other house, the ‘She did wish to learn, and she did learn. You shall hear
proper place for them being of course the country, and kept them tomorrow what she learned. Meanwhile, of course, the prospect
there, from the first, with the best people he could find to look struck her as slightly grim. She was young, untried, nervous: it
after them, parting even with his own servants to wait on them was a vision of serious duties and little company, of really great
and going down himself, whenever he might, to see how they loneliness. She hesitated – took a couple of days to consult and
were doing. The awkward thing was that they had practically no consider. But the salary offered much exceeded her modest
other relations and that his own affairs took up all his time. He measure, and on a second interview she faced the music, she
had put them in possession of Bly, which was healthy and secure, engaged.’ And Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the
and had placed at the head of their little establishment – but benefit of the company, moved me to throw in –
below stairs only – an excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, whom he was ‘The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by
sure his visitor would like and who had formerly been maid to his the splendid young man. She succumbed to it.’
mother. She was now housekeeper and was also acting for the He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the
time as superintendent to the little girl, of whom, without fire, gave a stir to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with
children of her own, she was, by good luck, extremely fond. There his back to us. ‘She saw him only twice.’
were plenty of people to help, but of course the young lady who ‘Yes, but that’s just the beauty of her passion.’
should go down as governess would be in supreme authority. She A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me.
would also have, in holidays, to look after the small boy, who had ‘It WAS the beauty of it. There were others,’ he went on, ‘who
been for a term at school – young as he was to be sent, but what hadn’t succumbed. He told her frankly all his difficulty – that for
else could be done? – and who, as the holidays were about to several applicants the conditions had been prohibitive. They
begin, would be back from one day to the other. There had been were, somehow, simply afraid. It sounded dull – it sounded
for the two children at first a young lady whom they had had the strange; and all the more so because of his main condition.’
misfortune to lose. She had done for them quite beautifully – she ‘Which was – ?’
was a most respectable person – till her death, the great ‘That she should never trouble him – but never, never: neither
awkwardness of which had, precisely, left no alternative but the appeal nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all
school for little Miles. Mrs. Grose, since then, in the way of questions herself, receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the
manners and things, had done as she could for Flora; and there whole thing over and let him alone. She promised to do this,
were, further, a cook, a housemaid, a dairywoman, an old pony, and she mentioned to me that when, for a moment,
an old groom, and an old gardener, all likewise thoroughly disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking her for the
respectable. sacrifice, she already felt rewarded.’
So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a ‘But was that all her reward?’ one of the ladies asked.
question. ‘And what did the former governess die of? – of so ‘She never saw him again.’
much respectability?’ ‘Oh!’ said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us
Our friend’s answer was prompt. ‘That will come out. I don’t again, was the only other word of importance contributed to the
anticipate.’ subject till, the next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the

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 henry james

best chair, he opened the faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned

gilt-edged 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 haven’t 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 author’s hand.

Chapter I
I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and
drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After
rising, in town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of
very bad days – found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I
had made a mistake. In this state of mind I spent the long hours
of bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the stopping
place at which I was to be met by a vehicle from the house. This
convenience, I was told, had been ordered, and I found, toward
the close of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in waiting for
me. Driving at that hour, on a lovely day, through a country to
which the summer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly
welcome, my fortitude mounted afresh and, as we turned into
the avenue, encountered a reprieve that was probably but a
proof of the point to which it had sunk. I suppose I had
expected, or had dreaded, something so melancholy that what
greeted me was a good surprise. I remember as a most pleasant
impression the broad, clear front, its open windows and fresh
curtains and the pair of maids looking out; I remember the lawn
and the bright flowers and the crunch of my wheels on the
gravel and the clustered treetops over which the rooks circled
and cawed in the golden sky. The scene had a greatness that
made it a different affair from my own scant home, and there
immediately appeared at the door, with a little girl in her hand,
a civil person who dropped me as decent a curtsy as if I had
been the mistress or a distinguished visitor. I had received in

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Harley Street a narrower notion of the place, and that, as I possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not
recalled it, made me think the proprietor still more of a without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a
gentleman, suggested that what I was to enjoy might be moment when I believed I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a
something beyond his promise. child; there had been another when I found myself just
I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried consciously starting as at the passage, before my door, of a light
triumphantly through the following hours by my introduction footstep. But these fancies were not marked enough not to be
to the younger of my pupils. The little girl who accompanied thrown off, and it is only in the light, or the gloom, I should
Mrs. Grose appeared to me on the spot a creature so charming rather say, of other and subsequent matters that they now come
as to make it a great fortune to have to do with her. She was the back to me. To watch, teach, ‘form’ little Flora would too
most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I afterward wondered evidently be the making of a happy and useful life. It had been
that my employer had not told me more of her. I slept little that agreed between us downstairs that after this first occasion I
night – I was too much excited; and this astonished me, too, I should have her as a matter of course at night, her small white
recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense of the liberality bed being already arranged, to that end, in my room. What I had
with which I was treated. The large, impressive room, one of the undertaken was the whole care of her, and she had remained,
best in the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, the full, just this last time, with Mrs. Grose only as an effect of our
figured draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time, I consideration for my inevitable strangeness and her natural
could see myself from head to foot, all struck me – like the timidity. In spite of this timidity – which the child herself, in
extraordinary charm of my small charge – as so many things the oddest way in the world, had been perfectly frank and brave
thrown in. It was thrown in as well, from the first moment, that about, allowing it, without a sign of uncomfortable
I should get on with Mrs. Grose in a relation over which, on my consciousness, with the deep, sweet serenity indeed of one of
way, in the coach, I fear I had rather brooded. The only thing Raphael’s holy infants, to be discussed, to be imputed to her,
indeed that in this early outlook might have made me shrink and to determine us – I feel quite sure she would presently like
again was the clear circumstance of her being so glad to see me. me. It was part of what I already liked Mrs. Grose herself for,
I perceived within half an hour that she was so glad – stout, the pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as
simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman – as to be positively on I sat at supper with four tall candles and with my pupil, in a
her guard against showing it too much. I wondered even then a high chair and a bib, brightly facing me, between them, over
little why she should wish not to show it, and that, with bread and milk. There were naturally things that in Flora’s
reflection, with suspicion, might of course have made me presence could pass between us only as prodigious and gratified
uneasy. looks, obscure and roundabout allusions.
But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a ‘And the little boy – does he look like her? Is he too so very
connection with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my remarkable?’
little girl, the vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more One wouldn’t flatter a child. ‘Oh, miss, MOST remarkable. If
than anything else to do with the restlessness that, before you think well of this one!’ – and she stood there with a plate in
morning, made me several times rise and wander about my her hand, beaming at our companion, who looked from one of
room to take in the whole picture and prospect; to watch, from us to the other with placid heavenly eyes that contained
my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look at such nothing to check us.
portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to listen, ‘Yes; if I do – ?’
while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, for the ‘You WILL be carried away by the little gentleman!’

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‘Well, that, I think, is what I came for – to be carried away. staircases that made me pause and even on the summit of an
I’m afraid, however,’ I remember feeling the impulse to add, ‘I’m old machicolated square tower that made me dizzy, her morning
rather easily carried away. I was carried away in London!’ music, her disposition to tell me so many more things than she
I can still see Mrs. Grose’s broad face as she took this in. ‘In asked, rang out and led me on. I have not seen Bly since the day
Harley Street?’ I left it, and I daresay that to my older and more informed eyes
‘In Harley Street.’ it would now appear sufficiently contracted. But as my little
‘Well, miss, you’re not the first – and you won’t be the last.’ conductress, with her hair of gold and her frock of blue, danced
‘Oh, I’ve no pretension,’ I could laugh, ‘to being the only one. before me round corners and pattered down passages, I had the
My other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a
tomorrow?’ place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take
‘Not tomorrow – Friday, miss. He arrives, as you did, by the all color out of storybooks and fairytales. Wasn’t it just a
coach, under care of the guard, and is to be met by the same storybook over which I had fallen adoze and adream? No; it was
carriage.’ a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few
I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant features of a building still older, half-replaced and half-utilized,
and friendly thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful
public conveyance I should be in waiting for him with his little of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at
sister; an idea in which Mrs. Grose concurred so heartily that I the helm!
somehow took her manner as a kind of comforting pledge –
never falsified, thank heaven! – that we should on every
question be quite at one. Oh, she was glad I was there!
What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could be
fairly called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival; it was
probably at the most only a slight oppression produced by a
fuller measure of the scale, as I walked round them, gazed up at
them, took them in, of my new circumstances. They had, as it
were, an extent and mass for which I had not been prepared and
in the presence of which I found myself, freshly, a little scared as
well as a little proud. Lessons, in this agitation, certainly
suffered some delay; I reflected that my first duty was, by the
gentlest arts I could contrive, to win the child into the sense of
knowing me. I spent the day with her out-of-doors; I arranged
with her, to her great satisfaction, that it should be she, she
only, who might show me the place. She showed it step by step
and room by room and secret by secret, with droll, delightful,
childish talk about it and with the result, in half an hour, of our
becoming immense friends. Young as she was, I was struck,
throughout our little tour, with her confidence and courage with
the way, in empty chambers and dull corridors, on crooked

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 Chapter II
This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over with
Flora to meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman; and all
the more for an incident that, presenting itself the second
evening, had deeply disconcerted me. The first day had been, on
the whole, as I have expressed, reassuring; but I was to see it
wind up in keen apprehension. The postbag, that evening – it
came late – contained a letter for me, which, however, in the
hand of my employer, I found to be composed but of a few
words enclosing another, addressed to himself, with a seal still
unbroken. ‘This, I recognize, is from the headmaster, and the
headmaster’s an awful bore. Read him, please; deal with him;
but mind you don’t report. Not a word. I’m off!’ I broke the seal
with a great effort – so great a one that I was a long time coming
to it; took the unopened missive at last up to my room and only
attacked it just before going to bed. I had better have let it wait
till morning, for it gave me a second sleepless night. With no
counsel to take, the next day, I was full of distress; and it finally
got so the better of me that I determined to open myself at least
to Mrs. Grose.
‘What does it mean? The child’s dismissed his school.’
She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then,
visibly, with a quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back.
‘But aren’t they all – ?’
‘Sent home – yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never
go back at all.’

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Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. ‘They won’t I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had
take him?’ established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a
‘They absolutely decline.’ pencil, and a copy of nice ‘round o’s,’ now presented herself to
At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; I view at the open door. She expressed in her little way an
saw them fill with good tears. ‘What has he done?’ extraordinary detachment from disagreeable duties, looking to
I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my letter – me, however, with a great childish light that seemed to offer it
which, however, had the effect of making her, without taking it, as a mere result of the affection she had conceived for my
simply put her hands behind her. She shook her head sadly. person, which had rendered necessary that she should follow
‘Such things are not for me, miss.’ me. I needed nothing more than this to feel the full force of
My counselor couldn’t read! I winced at my mistake, which I Mrs. Grose’s comparison, and, catching my pupil in my arms,
attenuated as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to covered her with kisses in which there was a sob of atonement.
her; then, faltering in the act and folding it up once more, I put Nonetheless, the rest of the day I watched for further
it back in my pocket. ‘Is he really BAD?’ occasion to approach my colleague, especially as, toward
The tears were still in her eyes. ‘Do the gentlemen say so?’ evening, I began to fancy she rather sought to avoid me. I
‘They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret overtook her, I remember, on the staircase; we went down
that it should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one together, and at the bottom I detained her, holding her there
meaning.’ Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore with a hand on her arm. ‘I take what you said to me at noon as a
to ask me what this meaning might be; so that, presently, to put declaration that YOU’VE never known him to be bad.’
the thing with some coherence and with the mere aid of her She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and
presence to my own mind, I went on: ‘That he’s an injury to the very honestly, adopted an attitude. ‘Oh, never known him – I
others.’ don’t pretend THAT!’
At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she I was upset again. ‘Then you HAVE known him – ?’
suddenly flamed up. ‘Master Miles! HIM an injury?’ ‘Yes indeed, miss, thank God!’
There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had On reflection I accepted this. ‘You mean that a boy who never
not yet seen the child, my very fears made me jump to the is – ?’
absurdity of the idea. I found myself, to meet my friend the ‘Is no boy for ME!’
better, offering it, on the spot, sarcastically. ‘To his poor little I held her tighter. ‘You like them with the spirit to be
innocent mates!’ naughty?’ Then, keeping pace with her answer, ‘So do I!’ I
‘It’s too dreadful,’ cried Mrs. Grose, ‘to say such cruel things! eagerly brought out. ‘But not to the degree to contaminate – ’
Why, he’s scarce ten years old.’ ‘To contaminate?’ – my big word left her at a loss. I explained
‘Yes, yes; it would be incredible.’ it. ‘To corrupt.’
She was evidently grateful for such a profession. ‘See him, She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an
miss, first. THEN believe it!’ I felt forthwith a new impatience to odd laugh. ‘Are you afraid he’ll corrupt YOU?’ She put the
see him; it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next question with such a fine bold humor that, with a laugh, a little
hours, was to deepen almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I silly doubtless, to match her own, I gave way for the time to the
could judge, of what she had produced in me, and she followed it apprehension of ridicule.
up with assurance. ‘You might as well believe it of the little lady. But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped
Bless her,’ she added the next moment – ’LOOK at her!’ up in another place. ‘What was the lady who was here before?’

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‘The last governess? She was also young and pretty – almost children altogether for the interval. But our young lady never
as young and almost as pretty, miss, even as you.’ came back, and at the very moment I was expecting her I heard
‘Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!’ I from the master that she was dead.’
recollect throwing off. ‘He seems to like us young and pretty!’ I turned this over. ‘But of what?’
‘Oh, he DID,’ Mrs. Grose assented: ‘it was the way he liked ‘He never told me! But please, miss,’ said Mrs. Grose, ‘I must
everyone!’ She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught get to my work.’
herself up. ‘I mean that’s HIS way – the master’s.’
I was struck. ‘But of whom did you speak first?’
She looked blank, but she colored. ‘Why, of HIM.’
‘Of the master?’
‘Of who else?’
There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I
had lost my impression of her having accidentally said more
than she meant; and I merely asked what I wanted to know. ‘Did
SHE see anything in the boy – ?’
‘That wasn’t right? She never told me.’
I had a scruple, but I overcame it. ‘Was she careful –
particular?’
Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. ‘About some
things – yes.’
‘But not about all?’
Again she considered. ‘Well, miss – she’s gone. I won’t tell
tales.’
‘I quite understand your feeling,’ I hastened to reply; but I
thought it, after an instant, not opposed to this concession to
pursue: ‘Did she die here?’
‘No – she went off.’
I don’t know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose’s
that struck me as ambiguous. ‘Went off to die?’ Mrs. Grose
looked straight out of the window, but I felt that,
hypothetically, I had a right to know what young persons
engaged for Bly were expected to do. ‘She was taken ill, you
mean, and went home?’
‘She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. She
left it, at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for a short
holiday, to which the time she had put in had certainly given her
a right. We had then a young woman – a nursemaid who had
stayed on and who was a good girl and clever; and SHE took the

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Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my
just preoccupations, a snub that could check the growth of our
mutual esteem. We met, after I had brought home little Miles,
more intimately than ever on the ground of my stupefaction,
my general emotion: so monstrous was I then ready to
pronounce it that such a child as had now been revealed to me
should be under an interdict. I was a little late on the scene, and
I felt, as he stood wistfully looking out for me before the door of
the inn at which the coach had put him down, that I had seen
him, on the instant, without and within, in the great glow of
freshness, the same positive fragrance of purity, in which I had,
from the first moment, seen his little sister. He was incredibly
beautiful, and Mrs. Grose had put her finger on it: everything
but a sort of passion of tenderness for him was swept away by
his presence. What I then and there took him to my heart for
was something divine that I have never found to the same
degree in any child – his indescribable little air of knowing
nothing in the world but love. It would have been impossible to
carry a bad name with a greater sweetness of innocence, and by
the time I had got back to Bly with him I remained merely
bewildered – so far, that is, as I was not outraged – by the sense
of the horrible letter locked up in my room, in a drawer. As soon
as I could compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I declared to
her that it was grotesque.
She promptly understood me. ‘You mean the cruel charge – ?’

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‘It doesn’t live an instant. My dear woman, LOOK at him!’ space and air and freedom, all the music of summer and all the
She smiled at my pretention to have discovered his charm. ‘I mystery of nature. And then there was consideration – and
assure you, miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then?’ she consideration was sweet. Oh, it was a trap – not designed, but
immediately added. deep – to my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to my vanity;
‘In answer to the letter?’ I had made up my mind. ‘Nothing.’ to whatever, in me, was most excitable. The best way to picture
‘And to his uncle?’ it all is to say that I was off my guard. They gave me so little
I was incisive. ‘Nothing.’ trouble – they were of a gentleness so extraordinary. I used to
‘And to the boy himself?’ speculate – but even this with a dim disconnectedness – as to
I was wonderful. ‘Nothing.’ how the rough future (for all futures are rough!) would handle
She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. ‘Then I’ll them and might bruise them. They had the bloom of health and
stand by you. We’ll see it out.’ happiness; and yet, as if I had been in charge of a pair of little
‘We’ll see it out!’ I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to grandees, of princes of the blood, for whom everything, to be
make it a vow. right, would have to be enclosed and protected, the only form
She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron that, in my fancy, the afteryears could take for them was that of
again with her detached hand. ‘Would you mind, miss, if I used a romantic, a really royal extension of the garden and the park.
the freedom – ’ It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke into
‘To kiss me? No!’ I took the good creature in my arms and, this gives the previous time a charm of stillness – that hush in
after we had embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and which something gathers or crouches. The change was actually
indignant. like the spring of a beast.
This, at all events, was for the time: a time so full that, as I In the first weeks the days were long; they often, at their
recall the way it went, it reminds me of all the art I now need to finest, gave me what I used to call my own hour, the hour when,
make it a little distinct. What I look back at with amazement is for my pupils, teatime and bedtime having come and gone, I
the situation I accepted. I had undertaken, with my companion, had, before my final retirement, a small interval alone. Much as
to see it out, and I was under a charm, apparently, that could I liked my companions, this hour was the thing in the day I liked
smooth away the extent and the far and difficult connections of most; and I liked it best of all when, as the light faded – or
such an effort. I was lifted aloft on a great wave of infatuation rather, I should say, the day lingered and the last calls of the last
and pity. I found it simple, in my ignorance, my confusion, and birds sounded, in a flushed sky, from the old trees – I could take
perhaps my conceit, to assume that I could deal with a boy a turn into the grounds and enjoy, almost with a sense of
whose education for the world was all on the point of property that amused and flattered me, the beauty and dignity
beginning. I am unable even to remember at this day what of the place. It was a pleasure at these moments to feel myself
proposal I framed for the end of his holidays and the tranquil and justified; doubtless, perhaps, also to reflect that by
resumption of his studies. Lessons with me, indeed, that my discretion, my quiet good sense and general high propriety, I
charming summer, we all had a theory that he was to have; but I was giving pleasure – if he ever thought of it! – to the person to
now feel that, for weeks, the lessons must have been rather my whose pressure I had responded. What I was doing was what he
own. I learned something – at first, certainly – that had not had earnestly hoped and directly asked of me, and that I
been one of the teachings of my small, smothered life; learned COULD, after all, do it proved even a greater joy than I had
to be amused, and even amusing, and not to think for the expected. I daresay I fancied myself, in short, a remarkable
morrow. It was the first time, in a manner, that I had known young woman and took comfort in the faith that this would

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more publicly appear. Well, I needed to be remarkable to offer a supposed. There came to me thus a bewilderment of vision of
front to the remarkable things that presently gave their first which, after these years, there is no living view that I can hope
sign. to give. An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object
It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour: of fear to a young woman privately bred; and the figure that
the children were tucked away, and I had come out for my stroll. faced me was – a few more seconds assured me – as little anyone
One of the thoughts that, as I don’t in the least shrink now else I knew as it was the image that had been in my mind. I had
from noting, used to be with me in these wanderings was that it not seen it in Harley Street – I had not seen it anywhere. The
would be as charming as a charming story suddenly to meet place, moreover, in the strangest way in the world, had, on the
someone. Someone would appear there at the turn of a path instant, and by the very fact of its appearance, become a
and would stand before me and smile and approve. I didn’t ask solitude. To me at least, making my statement here with a
more than that – I only asked that he should KNOW; and the deliberation with which I have never made it, the whole feeling
only way to be sure he knew would be to see it, and the kind of the moment returns. It was as if, while I took in – what I did
light of it, in his handsome face. That was exactly present to me take in – all the rest of the scene had been stricken with death. I
– by which I mean the face was – when, on the first of these can hear again, as I write, the intense hush in which the sounds
occasions, at the end of a long June day, I stopped short on of evening dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in the golden
emerging from one of the plantations and coming into view of sky, and the friendly hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But
the house. What arrested me on the spot – and with a shock there was no other change in nature, unless indeed it were a
much greater than any vision had allowed for – was the sense change that I saw with a stranger sharpness. The gold was still
that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real. He did stand in the sky, the clearness in the air, and the man who looked at
there! – but high up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of the me over the battlements was as definite as a picture in a frame.
tower to which, on that first morning, little Flora had conducted That’s how I thought, with extraordinary quickness, of each
me. This tower was one of a pair – square, incongruous, person that he might have been and that he was not. We were
crenelated structures – that were distinguished, for some confronted across our distance quite long enough for me to ask
reason, though I could see little difference, as the new and the myself with intensity who then he was and to feel, as an effect
old. They flanked opposite ends of the house and were probably of my inability to say, a wonder that in a few instants more
architectural absurdities, redeemed in a measure indeed by not became intense.
being wholly disengaged nor of a height too pretentious, dating, The great question, or one of these, is, afterward, I know,
in their gingerbread antiquity, from a romantic revival that was with regard to certain matters, the question of how long they
already a respectable past. I admired them, had fancies about have lasted. Well, this matter of mine, think what you will of it,
them, for we could all profit in a degree, especially when they lasted while I caught at a dozen possibilities, none of which
loomed through the dusk, by the grandeur of their actual made a difference for the better, that I could see, in there having
battlements; yet it was not at such an elevation that the figure I been in the house – and for how long, above all? – a person of
had so often invoked seemed most in place. whom I was in ignorance. It lasted while I just bridled a little
It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twilight, I with the sense that my office demanded that there should be no
remember, two distinct gasps of emotion, which were, sharply, such ignorance and no such person. It lasted while this visitant,
the shock of my first and that of my second surprise. My second at all events – and there was a touch of the strange freedom, as I
was a violent perception of the mistake of my first: the man remember, in the sign of familiarity of his wearing no hat –
who met my eyes was not the person I had precipitately seemed to fix me, from his position, with just the question, just

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the scrutiny through the fading light, that his own presence
provoked. We were too far apart to call to each other, but there
was a moment at which, at shorter range, some challenge
between us, breaking the hush, would have been the right result
of our straight mutual stare. He was in one of the angles, the
one away from the house, very erect, as it struck me, and with
both hands on the ledge. So I saw him as I see the letters I form
on this page; then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the
spectacle, he slowly changed his place – passed, looking at me

Chapter IV
hard all the while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I
had the sharpest sense that during this transit he never took his
eyes from me, and I can see at this moment the way his hand, as
he went, passed from one of the crenelations to the next. He
stopped at the other corner, but less long, and even as he It was not that I didn’t wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was
turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned away; that was rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a ‘secret’ at Bly – a
all I knew. mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative
kept in unsuspected confinement? I can’t say how long I turned
it over, or how long, in a confusion of curiosity and dread, I
remained where I had had my collision; I only recall that when I
re-entered the house darkness had quite closed in. Agitation, in
the interval, certainly had held me and driven me, for I must, in
circling about the place, have walked three miles; but I was to
be, later on, so much more overwhelmed that this mere dawn of
alarm was a comparatively human chill. The most singular part
of it, in fact – singular as the rest had been – was the part I
became, in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose. This picture
comes back to me in the general train – the impression, as I
received it on my return, of the wide white panelled space,
bright in the lamplight and with its portraits and red carpet,
and of the good surprised look of my friend, which immediately
told me she had missed me. It came to me straightway, under
her contact, that, with plain heartiness, mere relieved anxiety at
my appearance, she knew nothing whatever that could bear
upon the incident I had there ready for her. I had not suspected
in advance that her comfortable face would pull me up, and I
somehow measured the importance of what I had seen by my
thus finding myself hesitate to mention it. Scarce anything in
the whole history seems to me so odd as this fact that my real

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beginning of fear was one, as I may say, with the instinct of me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my original fears, the
sparing my companion. On the spot, accordingly, in the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the probable gray prose
pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, I, for a reason that I of my office. There was to be no gray prose, it appeared, and no
couldn’t then have phrased, achieved an inward resolution – long grind; so how could work not be charming that presented
offered a vague pretext for my lateness and, with the plea of the itself as daily beauty? It was all the romance of the nursery and
beauty of the night and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as the poetry of the schoolroom. I don’t mean by this, of course,
soon as possible to my room. that we studied only fiction and verse; I mean I can express no
Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it was a otherwise the sort of interest my companions inspired. How
queer affair enough. There were hours, from day to day – or at can I describe that except by saying that instead of growing
least there were moments, snatched even from clear duties – used to them – and it’s a marvel for a governess: I call the
when I had to shut myself up to think. It was not so much yet sisterhood to witness! – I made constant fresh discoveries.
that I was more nervous than I could bear to be as that I was There was one direction, assuredly, in which these discoveries
remarkably afraid of becoming so; for the truth I had now to stopped: deep obscurity continued to cover the region of the
turn over was, simply and clearly, the truth that I could arrive at boy’s conduct at school. It had been promptly given me, I have
no account whatever of the visitor with whom I had been so noted, to face that mystery without a pang. Perhaps even it
inexplicably and yet, as it seemed to me, so intimately would be nearer the truth to say that – without a word – he
concerned. It took little time to see that I could sound without himself had cleared it up. He had made the whole charge absurd.
forms of inquiry and without exciting remark any domestic My conclusion bloomed there with the real rose flush of his
complications. The shock I had suffered must have sharpened all innocence: he was only too fine and fair for the little horrid,
my senses; I felt sure, at the end of three days and as the result unclean school world, and he had paid a price for it. I reflected
of mere closer attention, that I had not been practiced upon by acutely that the sense of such differences, such superiorities of
the servants nor made the object of any ‘game.’ Of whatever it quality, always, on the part of the majority – which could
was that I knew, nothing was known around me. There was but include even stupid, sordid headmasters – turn infallibly to the
one sane inference: someone had taken a liberty rather gross. vindictive.
That was what, repeatedly, I dipped into my room and locked Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only fault,
the door to say to myself. We had been, collectively, subject to and it never made Miles a muff) that kept them – how shall I
an intrusion; some unscrupulous traveler, curious in old houses, express it? – almost impersonal and certainly quite
had made his way in unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from the unpunishable. They were like the cherubs of the anecdote, who
best point of view, and then stolen out as he came. If he had had – morally, at any rate – nothing to whack! I remember
given me such a bold hard stare, that was but a part of his feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as it were, no
indiscretion. The good thing, after all, was that we should surely history. We expect of a small child a scant one, but there was in
see no more of him. this beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive, yet
This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me to extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of his age
judge that what, essentially, made nothing else much signify I have seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. He had
was simply my charming work. My charming work was just my never for a second suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his
life with Miles and Flora, and through nothing could I so like it having really been chastised. If he had been wicked he would
as through feeling that I could throw myself into it in trouble. have ‘caught’ it, and I should have caught it by the rebound – I
The attraction of my small charges was a constant joy, leading should have found the trace. I found nothing at all, and he was

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therefore an angel. He never spoke of his school, never stood. His face was close to the glass, yet the effect of this
mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for my part, was quite better view was, strangely, only to show me how intense the
too much disgusted to allude to them. Of course I was under the former had been. He remained but a few seconds – long enough
spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I to convince me he also saw and recognized; but it was as if I had
perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an been looking at him for years and had known him always.
antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in Something, however, happened this time that had not
receipt in these days of disturbing letters from home, where happened before; his stare into my face, through the glass and
things were not going well. But with my children, what things in across the room, was as deep and hard as then, but it quitted me
the world mattered? That was the question I used to put to my for a moment during which I could still watch it, see it fix
scrappy retirements. I was dazzled by their loveliness. successively several other things. On the spot there came to me
There was a Sunday – to get on – when it rained with such the added shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had
force and for so many hours that there could be no procession come there. He had come for someone else.
to church; in consequence of which, as the day declined, I had The flash of this knowledge – for it was knowledge in the
arranged with Mrs. Grose that, should the evening show midst of dread – produced in me the most extraordinary effect,
improvement, we would attend together the late service. The started as I stood there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage.
rain happily stopped, and I prepared for our walk, which, I say courage because I was beyond all doubt already far gone. I
through the park and by the good road to the village, would be a bounded straight out of the door again, reached that of the
matter of twenty minutes. Coming downstairs to meet my house, got, in an instant, upon the drive, and, passing along the
colleague in the hall, I remembered a pair of gloves that had terrace as fast as I could rush, turned a corner and came full in
required three stitches and that had received them – with a sight. But it was in sight of nothing now – my visitor had
publicity perhaps not edifying – while I sat with the children at vanished. I stopped, I almost dropped, with the real relief of
their tea, served on Sundays, by exception, in that cold, clean this; but I took in the whole scene – I gave him time to reappear.
temple of mahogany and brass, the ‘grown-up’ dining room. The I call it time, but how long was it? I can’t speak to the purpose
gloves had been dropped there, and I turned in to recover them. today of the duration of these things. That kind of measure
The day was gray enough, but the afternoon light still lingered, must have left me: they couldn’t have lasted as they actually
and it enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to appeared to me to last. The terrace and the whole place, the
recognize, on a chair near the wide window, then closed, the lawn and the garden beyond it, all I could see of the park, were
articles I wanted, but to become aware of a person on the other empty with a great emptiness. There were shrubberies and big
side of the window and looking straight in. One step into the trees, but I remember the clear assurance I felt that none of
room had sufficed; my vision was instantaneous; it was all there. them concealed him. He was there or was not there: not there if
The person looking straight in was the person who had already I didn’t see him. I got hold of this; then, instinctively, instead of
appeared to me. He appeared thus again with I won’t say greater returning as I had come, went to the window. It was confusedly
distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a nearness that present to me that I ought to place myself where he had stood. I
represented a forward stride in our intercourse and made me, as did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had
I met him, catch my breath and turn cold. He was the same – he looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to show me exactly
was the same, and seen, this time, as he had been seen before, what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself
from the waist up, the window, though the dining room was on just before, came in from the hall. With this I had the full image
the ground floor, not going down to the terrace on which he of a repetition of what had already occurred. She saw me as I

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had seen my own visitant; she pulled up short as I had done; I

gave her something of the shock that I had received. She turned
white, and this made me ask myself if I had blanched as much.
She stared, in short, and retreated on just MY lines, and I knew
she had then passed out and come round to me and that I
should presently meet her. I remained where I was, and while I
waited I thought of more things than one. But there’s only one I
take space to mention. I wondered why SHE should be scared.

Chapter V
Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house,
she loomed again into view. ‘What in the name of goodness is
the matter – ?’ She was now flushed and out of breath.
I said nothing till she came quite near. ‘With me?’ I must have
made a wonderful face. ‘Do I show it?’
‘You’re as white as a sheet. You look awful.’
I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any
innocence. My need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose’s had
dropped, without a rustle, from my shoulders, and if I wavered
for the instant it was not with what I kept back. I put out my
hand to her and she took it; I held her hard a little, liking to feel
her close to me. There was a kind of support in the shy heave of
her surprise. ‘You came for me for church, of course, but I can’t
go.’
‘Has anything happened?’
‘Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?’
‘Through this window? Dreadful!’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve been frightened.’ Mrs. Grose’s eyes
expressed plainly that SHE had no wish to be, yet also that she
knew too well her place not to be ready to share with me any
marked inconvenience. Oh, it was quite settled that she MUST
share! ‘Just what you saw from the dining room a minute ago
was the effect of that. What I saw – just before – was much
worse.’
Her hand tightened. ‘What was it?’

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‘An extraordinary man. Looking in.’ ‘The children?’

‘What extraordinary man?’ ‘I can’t leave them now.’
‘I haven’t the least idea.’ ‘You’re afraid – ?’
Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. ‘Then where is he gone?’ I spoke boldly. ‘I’m afraid of HIM.’
‘I know still less.’ Mrs. Grose’s large face showed me, at this, for the first time,
‘Have you seen him before?’ the faraway faint glimmer of a consciousness more acute: I
‘Yes – once. On the old tower.’ somehow made out in it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself
She could only look at me harder. ‘Do you mean he’s a had not given her and that was as yet quite obscure to me. It
stranger?’ comes back to me that I thought instantly of this as something I
‘Oh, very much!’ could get from her; and I felt it to be connected with the desire
‘Yet you didn’t tell me?’ she presently showed to know more. ‘When was it – on the
‘No – for reasons. But now that you’ve guessed – ’ tower?’
Mrs. Grose’s round eyes encountered this charge. ‘Ah, I ‘About the middle of the month. At this same hour.’
haven’t guessed!’ she said very simply. ‘How can I if YOU don’t ‘Almost at dark,’ said Mrs. Grose.
imagine?’ ‘Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you.’
‘I don’t in the very least.’ ‘Then how did he get in?’
‘You’ve seen him nowhere but on the tower?’ ‘And how did he get out?’ I laughed. ‘I had no opportunity to
‘And on this spot just now.’ ask him! This evening, you see,’ I pursued, ‘he has not been able
Mrs. Grose looked round again. ‘What was he doing on the to get in.’
tower?’ ‘He only peeps?’
‘Only standing there and looking down at me.’ ‘I hope it will be confined to that!’ She had now let go my
She thought a minute. ‘Was he a gentleman?’ hand; she turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I
I found I had no need to think. ‘No.’ She gazed in deeper brought out: ‘Go to church. Goodbye. I must watch.’
wonder. ‘No.’ Slowly she faced me again. ‘Do you fear for them?’
‘Then nobody about the place? Nobody from the village?’ We met in another long look. ‘Don’t YOU?’ Instead of
‘Nobody – nobody. I didn’t tell you, but I made sure.’ answering she came nearer to the window and, for a minute,
She breathed a vague relief: this was, oddly, so much to the applied her face to the glass. ‘You see how he could see,’ I
good. It only went indeed a little way. ‘But if he isn’t a meanwhile went on.
gentleman – ’ She didn’t move. ‘How long was he here?’
‘What IS he? He’s a horror.’ ‘Till I came out. I came to meet him.’
‘A horror?’ Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in
‘He’s – God help me if I know WHAT he is!’ her face. ‘I couldn’t have come out.’
Mrs. Grose looked round once more; she fixed her eyes on the ‘Neither could I!’ I laughed again. ‘But I did come. I have my
duskier distance, then, pulling herself together, turned to me duty.’
with abrupt inconsequence. ‘It’s time we should be at church.’ ‘So have I mine,’ she replied; after which she added: ‘What is
‘Oh, I’m not fit for church!’ he like?’
‘Won’t it do you good?’ ‘I’ve been dying to tell you. But he’s like nobody.’
‘It won’t do THEM – ! I nodded at the house. ‘Nobody?’ she echoed.

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‘He has no hat.’ Then seeing in her face that she already, in ‘And what became of him?’
this, with a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, I quickly She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. ‘He
added stroke to stroke. ‘He has red hair, very red, close-curling, went, too,’ she brought out at last.
and a pale face, long in shape, with straight, good features and ‘Went where?’
little, rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair. His Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. ‘God knows
eyebrows are, somehow, darker; they look particularly arched where! He died.’
and as if they might move a good deal. His eyes are sharp, ‘Died?’ I almost shrieked.
strange – awfully; but I only know clearly that they’re rather She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly
small and very fixed. His mouth’s wide, and his lips are thin, and to utter the wonder of it. ‘Yes. Mr. Quint is dead.’
except for his little whiskers he’s quite clean-shaven. He gives
me a sort of sense of looking like an actor.’
‘An actor!’ It was impossible to resemble one less, at least,
than Mrs. Grose at that moment.
‘I’ve never seen one, but so I suppose them. He’s tall, active,
erect,’ I continued, ‘but never – no, never! – a gentleman.’
My companion’s face had blanched as I went on; her round
eyes started and her mild mouth gaped. ‘A gentleman?’ she
gasped, confounded, stupefied: ‘a gentleman HE?’
‘You know him then?’
She visibly tried to hold herself. ‘But he IS handsome?’
I saw the way to help her. ‘Remarkably!’
‘And dressed – ?’
‘In somebody’s clothes.’ ‘They’re smart, but they’re not his
own.’
She broke into a breathless affirmative groan: ‘They’re the
master’s!’
I caught it up. ‘You DO know him?’
She faltered but a second. ‘Quint!’ she cried.
‘Quint?’
‘Peter Quint – his own man, his valet, when he was here!’
‘When the master was?’
Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together. ‘He
never wore his hat, but he did wear – well, there were waistcoats
missed. They were both here – last year. Then the master went,
and Quint was alone.’
I followed, but halting a little. ‘Alone?’
‘Alone with US.’ Then, as from a deeper depth, ‘In charge,’ she
added.

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It took of course more than that particular passage to place us
together in presence of what we had now to live with as we could
– my dreadful liability to impressions of the order so vividly
exemplified, and my companion’s knowledge, henceforth – a
knowledge half consternation and half compassion – of that
liability. There had been, this evening, after the revelation left me,
for an hour, so prostrate – there had been, for either of us, no
attendance on any service but a little service of tears and vows, of
prayers and promises, a climax to the series of mutual challenges
and pledges that had straightway ensued on our retreating
together to the schoolroom and shutting ourselves up there to
have everything out. The result of our having everything out was
simply to reduce our situation to the last rigor of its elements.
She herself had seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and
nobody in the house but the governess was in the governess’s
plight; yet she accepted without directly impugning my sanity the
truth as I gave it to her, and ended by showing me, on this
ground, an awestricken tenderness, an expression of the sense of
my more than questionable privilege, of which the very breath
has remained with me as that of the sweetest of human charities.
What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was
that we thought we might bear things together; and I was not
even sure that, in spite of her exemption, it was she who had
the best of the burden. I knew at this hour, I think, as well as I
knew later, what I was capable of meeting to shelter my pupils;

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but it took me some time to be wholly sure of what my honest ‘The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his
ally was prepared for to keep terms with so compromising a history, in any way.’
contract. I was queer company enough – quite as queer as the ‘Oh, the little lady doesn’t remember. She never heard or
company I received; but as I trace over what we went through I knew.’
see how much common ground we must have found in the one ‘The circumstances of his death?’ I thought with some
idea that, by good fortune, COULD steady us. It was the idea, intensity. ‘Perhaps not. But Miles would remember – Miles
the second movement, that led me straight out, as I may say, of would know.’
the inner chamber of my dread. I could take the air in the court, ‘Ah, don’t try him!’ broke from Mrs. Grose.
at least, and there Mrs. Grose could join me. Perfectly can I I returned her the look she had given me. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ I
recall now the particular way strength came to me before we continued to think. ‘It IS rather odd.’
separated for the night. We had gone over and over every ‘That he has never spoken of him?’
feature of what I had seen. ‘Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were ‘great
‘He was looking for someone else, you say – someone who friends’?’
was not you?’ ‘Oh, it wasn’t HIM!’ Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared. ‘It
‘He was looking for little Miles.’ A portentous clearness now was Quint’s own fancy. To play with him, I mean – to spoil him.’
possessed me. ‘THAT’S whom he was looking for.’ She paused a moment; then she added: ‘Quint was much too
‘But how do you know?’ free.’
‘I know, I know, I know!’ My exaltation grew. ‘And YOU know, This gave me, straight from my vision of his face – SUCH a
my dear!’ face! – a sudden sickness of disgust. ‘Too free with MY boy?’
She didn’t deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much ‘Too free with everyone!’
telling as that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate: ‘What if I forbore, for the moment, to analyze this description further
HE should see him?’ than by the reflection that a part of it applied to several of the
‘Little Miles? That’s what he wants!’ members of the household, of the half-dozen maids and men
She looked immensely scared again. ‘The child?’ who were still of our small colony. But there was everything, for
‘Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to THEM.’ That our apprehension, in the lucky fact that no discomfortable
he might was an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could legend, no perturbation of scullions, had ever, within anyone’s
keep it at bay; which, moreover, as we lingered there, was what I memory attached to the kind old place. It had neither bad name
succeeded in practically proving. I had an absolute certainty nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose, most apparently, only desired to
that I should see again what I had already seen, but something cling to me and to quake in silence. I even put her, the very last
within me said that by offering myself bravely as the sole thing of all, to the test. It was when, at midnight, she had her
subject of such experience, by accepting, by inviting, by hand on the schoolroom door to take leave. ‘I have it from you
surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory victim and then – for it’s of great importance – that he was definitely and
guard the tranquility of my companions. The children, in admittedly bad?’
especial, I should thus fence about and absolutely save. I recall ‘Oh, not admittedly. I knew it – but the master didn’t.’
one of the last things I said that night to Mrs. Grose. ‘And you never told him?’
‘It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned – ’ ‘Well, he didn’t like tale-bearing – he hated complaints. He
She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. ‘His having was terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people were
been here and the time they were with him?’ all right to HIM – ’

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‘He wouldn’t be bothered with more?’ This squared well keep awhile! – and of the months he had continuously passed at
enough with my impressions of him: he was not a trouble- Bly, which, added up, made a formidable stretch. The limit of
loving gentleman, nor so very particular perhaps about some of this evil time had arrived only when, on the dawn of a winter’s
the company HE kept. All the same, I pressed my interlocutress. morning, Peter Quint was found, by a laborer going to early
‘I promise you I would have told!’ work, stone dead on the road from the village: a catastrophe
She felt my discrimination. ‘I daresay I was wrong. But, really, explained – superficially at least – by a visible wound to his
I was afraid.’ head; such a wound as might have been produced – and as, on
‘Afraid of what?’ the final evidence, HAD been – by a fatal slip, in the dark and
‘Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever – he was so after leaving the public house, on the steepish icy slope, a wrong
deep.’ path altogether, at the bottom of which he lay. The icy slope, the
I took this in still more than, probably, I showed. ‘You weren’t turn mistaken at night and in liquor, accounted for much –
afraid of anything else? Not of his effect – ?’ practically, in the end and after the inquest and boundless
‘His effect?’ she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting chatter, for everything; but there had been matters in his life –
while I faltered. strange passages and perils, secret disorders, vices more than
‘On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge.’ suspected – that would have accounted for a good deal more.
‘No, they were not in mine!’ she roundly and distressfully I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be a
returned. ‘The master believed in him and placed him here credible picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days
because he was supposed not to be well and the country air so literally able to find a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism
good for him. So he had everything to say. Yes’ – she let me have the occasion demanded of me. I now saw that I had been asked
it – ’even about THEM.’ for a service admirable and difficult; and there would be a
‘Them – that creature?’ I had to smother a kind of howl. ‘And greatness in letting it be seen – oh, in the right quarter! – that I
you could bear it!’ could succeed where many another girl might have failed. It was
‘No. I couldn’t – and I can’t now!’ And the poor woman burst an immense help to me – I confess I rather applaud myself as I
into tears. look back! – that I saw my service so strongly and so simply. I was
A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I have said, to there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the
follow them; yet how often and how passionately, for a week, we most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal of whose
came back together to the subject! Much as we had discussed it helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep,
that Sunday night, I was, in the immediate later hours in constant ache of one’s own committed heart. We were cut off,
especial – for it may be imagined whether I slept – still haunted really, together; we were united in our danger. They had nothing
with the shadow of something she had not told me. I myself had but me, and I – well, I had THEM. It was in short a magnificent
kept back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. Grose had kept chance. This chance presented itself to me in an image richly
back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this was not from material. I was a screen – I was to stand before them. The more I
a failure of frankness, but because on every side there were saw, the less they would. I began to watch them in a stifled
fears. It seems to me indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the suspense, a disguised excitement that might well, had it
morrow’s sun was high I had restlessly read into the fact before continued too long, have turned to something like madness.
us almost all the meaning they were to receive from subsequent What saved me, as I now see, was that it turned to something else
and more cruel occurrences. What they gave me above all was altogether. It didn’t last as suspense – it was superseded by horrible
just the sinister figure of the living man – the dead one would proofs. Proofs, I say, yes – from the moment I really took hold.

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This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened the conviction I from one moment to another found myself
to spend in the grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. forming as to what I should see straight before me and across
We had left Miles indoors, on the red cushion of a deep window the lake as a consequence of raising my eyes. They were attached
seat; he had wished to finish a book, and I had been glad to at this juncture to the stitching in which I was engaged, and I
encourage a purpose so laudable in a young man whose only can feel once more the spasm of my effort not to move them till
defect was an occasional excess of the restless. His sister, on the I should so have steadied myself as to be able to make up my
contrary, had been alert to come out, and I strolled with her half mind what to do. There was an alien object in view – a figure
an hour, seeking the shade, for the sun was still high and the whose right of presence I instantly, passionately questioned. I
day exceptionally warm. I was aware afresh, with her, as we recollect counting over perfectly the possibilities, reminding
went, of how, like her brother, she contrived – it was the myself that nothing was more natural, for instance, then the
charming thing in both children – to let me alone without appearance of one of the men about the place, or even of a
appearing to drop me and to accompany me without appearing messenger, a postman, or a tradesman’s boy, from the village.
to surround. They were never importunate and yet never That reminder had as little effect on my practical certitude as I
listless. My attention to them all really went to seeing them was conscious – still even without looking – of its having upon
amuse themselves immensely without me: this was a spectacle the character and attitude of our visitor. Nothing was more
they seemed actively to prepare and that engaged me as an natural than that these things should be the other things that
active admirer. I walked in a world of their invention – they had they absolutely were not.
no occasion whatever to draw upon mine; so that my time was Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure
taken only with being, for them, some remarkable person or myself as soon as the small clock of my courage should have
thing that the game of the moment required and that was ticked out the right second; meanwhile, with an effort that was
merely, thanks to my superior, my exalted stamp, a happy and already sharp enough, I transferred my eyes straight to little
highly distinguished sinecure. I forget what I was on the present Flora, who, at the moment, was about ten yards away. My heart
occasion; I only remember that I was something very important had stood still for an instant with the wonder and terror of the
and very quiet and that Flora was playing very hard. We were on question whether she too would see; and I held my breath while
the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately begun geography, the I waited for what a cry from her, what some sudden innocent
lake was the Sea of Azof. sign either of interest or of alarm, would tell me. I waited, but
Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the nothing came; then, in the first place – and there is something
other side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. more dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relate – I was
The way this knowledge gathered in me was the strangest thing determined by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from
in the world – the strangest, that is, except the very much her had previously dropped; and, in the second, by the
stranger in which it quickly merged itself. I had sat down with a circumstance that, also within the minute, she had, in her play,
piece of work – for I was something or other that could sit – on turned her back to the water. This was her attitude when I at
the old stone bench which overlooked the pond; and in this last looked at her – looked with the confirmed conviction that
position I began to take in with certitude, and yet without we were still, together, under direct personal notice. She had
direct vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third person. The picked up a small flat piece of wood, which happened to have in
old trees, the thick shrubbery, made a great and pleasant shade, it a little hole that had evidently suggested to her the idea of
but it was all suffused with the brightness of the hot, still hour. sticking in another fragment that might figure as a mast and
There was no ambiguity in anything; none whatever, at least, in make the thing a boat. This second morsel, as I watched her, she

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was very markedly and intently attempting to tighten in its

place. My apprehension of what she was doing sustained me so
that after some seconds I felt I was ready for more. Then I again
shifted my eyes – I faced what I had to face.

Chapter VII
I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can
give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet
I still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms:
‘They KNOW – it’s too monstrous: they know, they know!’
‘And what on earth – ?’ I felt her incredulity as she held me.
‘Why, all that WE know – and heaven knows what else
besides!’ Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it
out perhaps only now with full coherency even to myself. ‘Two
hours ago, in the garden’ – I could scarce articulate – ’Flora
SAW!’
Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the
stomach. ‘She has told you?’ she panted.
‘Not a word – that’s the horror. She kept it to herself! The
child of eight, THAT child!’ Unutterable still, for me, was the
stupefaction of it.
Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. ‘Then how
do you know?’
‘I was there – I saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly
aware.’
‘Do you mean aware of HIM?’
‘No – of HER.’ I was conscious as I spoke that I looked
prodigious things, for I got the slow reflection of them in my
companion’s face. ‘Another person – this time; but a figure of
quite as unmistakable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale
and dreadful – with such an air also, and such a face! – on the

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other side of the lake. I was there with the child – quiet for the there would really be to give way to. ‘Dear, dear – we must keep
hour; and in the midst of it she came.’ our heads! And after all, if she doesn’t mind it – !’ She even tried
‘Came how – from where?’ a grim joke. ‘Perhaps she likes it!’
‘From where they come from! She just appeared and stood ‘Likes SUCH things – a scrap of an infant!’
there – but not so near.’ ‘Isn’t it just a proof of her blessed innocence?’ my friend
‘And without coming nearer?’ bravely inquired.
‘Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as She brought me, for the instant, almost round. ‘Oh, we must
close as you!’ clutch at THAT – we must cling to it! If it isn’t a proof of what
My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. ‘Was she you say, it’s a proof of – God knows what! For the woman’s a
someone you’ve never seen?’ horror of horrors.’
‘Yes. But someone the child has. Someone YOU have.’ Then, Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground;
to show how I had thought it all out: ‘My predecessor – the one then at last raising them, ‘Tell me how you know,’ she said.
who died.’ ‘Then you admit it’s what she was?’ I cried.
‘Miss Jessel?’ ‘Tell me how you know,’ my friend simply repeated.
‘Miss Jessel. You don’t believe me?’ I pressed. ‘Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked.’
She turned right and left in her distress. ‘How can you be ‘At you, do you mean – so wickedly?’
sure?’ ‘Dear me, no – I could have borne that. She gave me never a
This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of glance. She only fixed the child.’
impatience. ‘Then ask Flora – SHE’S sure!’ But I had no sooner Mrs. Grose tried to see it. ‘Fixed her?’
spoken than I caught myself up. ‘No, for God’s sake, DON’T! ‘Ah, with such awful eyes!’
She’ll say she isn’t – she’ll lie!’ She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled
Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. them. ‘Do you mean of dislike?’
‘Ah, how CAN you?’ ‘God help us, no. Of something much worse.’
‘Because I’m clear. Flora doesn’t want me to know.’ ‘Worse than dislike? – this left her indeed at a loss.
‘It’s only then to spare you.’ ‘With a determination – indescribable. With a kind of fury of
‘No, no – there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the intention.’
more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t I made her turn pale. ‘Intention?’
know what I DON’T see – what I DON’T fear!’ ‘To get hold of her.’ Mrs. Grose – her eyes just lingering on
Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. ‘You mean you’re afraid mine – gave a shudder and walked to the window; and while she
of seeing her again?’ stood there looking out I completed my statement. ‘THAT’S
‘Oh, no; that’s nothing – now!’ Then I explained. ‘It’s of NOT what Flora knows.’
seeing her.’ After a little she turned round. ‘The person was in black, you
But my companion only looked wan. ‘I don’t understand you.’ say?’
‘Why, it’s that the child may keep it up – and that the child ‘In mourning – rather poor, almost shabby. But – yes – with
assuredly WILL – without my knowing it.’ extraordinary beauty.’ I now recognized to what I had at last,
At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment stroke by stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for she
collapsed, yet presently to pull herself together again, as if from quite visibly weighed this. ‘Oh, handsome – very, very,’ I
the positive force of the sense of what, should we yield an inch, insisted; ‘wonderfully handsome. But infamous.’

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She slowly came back to me. ‘Miss Jessel – WAS infamous.’ ‘Then you do know what she died of?’ I asked.
She once more took my hand in both her own, holding it as ‘No – I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad
tight as if to fortify me against the increase of alarm I might enough I didn’t; and I thanked heaven she was well out of this!’
draw from this disclosure. ‘They were both infamous,’ she finally ‘Yet you had, then, your idea – ’
said. ‘Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes – as to that. She
So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found couldn’t have stayed. Fancy it here – for a governess! And
absolutely a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. ‘I afterward I imagined – and I still imagine. And what I imagine
appreciate,’ I said, ‘the great decency of your not having is dreadful.’
hitherto spoken; but the time has certainly come to give me the ‘Not so dreadful as what I do,’ I replied; on which I must have
whole thing.’ She appeared to assent to this, but still only in shown her – as I was indeed but too conscious – a front of
silence; seeing which I went on: ‘I must have it now. Of what did miserable defeat. It brought out again all her compassion for
she die? Come, there was something between them.’ me, and at the renewed touch of her kindness my power to
‘There was everything.’ resist broke down. I burst, as I had, the other time, made her
‘In spite of the difference – ?’ burst, into tears; she took me to her motherly breast, and my
‘Oh, of their rank, their condition’ – she brought it woefully lamentation overflowed. ‘I don’t do it!’ I sobbed in despair; ‘I
out. ‘SHE was a lady.’ don’t save or shield them! It’s far worse than I dreamed –
I turned it over; I again saw. ‘Yes – she was a lady.’ they’re lost!’
‘And he so dreadfully below,’ said Mrs. Grose.
I felt that I doubtless needn’t press too hard, in such
company, on the place of a servant in the scale; but there was
nothing to prevent an acceptance of my companion’s own
measure of my predecessor’s abasement. There was a way to
deal with that, and I dealt; the more readily for my full vision –
on the evidence – of our employer’s late clever, good-looking
‘own’ man; impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved. ‘The fellow
was a hound.’
Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case for a
sense of shades. ‘I’ve never seen one like him. He did what he
wished.’
‘With HER?’
‘With them all.’
It was as if now in my friend’s own eyes Miss Jessel had again
appeared. I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their
evocation of her as distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and
I brought out with decision: ‘It must have been also what SHE
wished!’
Mrs. Grose’s face signified that it had been indeed, but she
said at the same time: ‘Poor woman – she paid for it!’

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What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough: there were in
the matter I had put before her depths and possibilities that I
lacked resolution to sound; 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 heads if
we should keep nothing else – difficult indeed as that might be
in the face of what, in our prodigious experience, was least to be
questioned. Late that night, while the house slept, we had
another talk in my room, when she went all the way with me as
to its being beyond doubt that I had seen exactly what I had
seen. To hold her perfectly in the pinch of that, I found I had
only to ask her how, if I had ‘made it up,’ I came to be able to
give, of each of the persons appearing to me, a picture
disclosing, to the last detail, their special marks – a portrait on
the exhibition of which she had instantly recognized 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 her on the ground of a
probability that with recurrence – for recurrence we took for
granted – I should get used to my danger, distinctly professing
that my personal exposure had suddenly become the least of my
discomforts. It was my new suspicion that was intolerable; and
yet even to this complication the later hours of the day had
brought a little ease.

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On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, in
returned to my pupils, associating the right remedy for my this review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements
dismay with that sense of their charm which I had already of comfort that still remained to me. I should not for instance
found to be a thing I could positively cultivate and which had have been able to asseverate to my friend that I was certain –
never failed me yet. I had simply, in other words, plunged afresh which was so much to the good – that I at least had not betrayed
into Flora’s special society and there become aware – it was myself. I should not have been prompted, by stress of need, by
almost a luxury! – that she could put her little conscious hand desperation of mind – I scarce know what to call it – to invoke
straight upon the spot that ached. She had looked at me in such further aid to intelligence as might spring from pushing
sweet speculation and then had accused me to my face of having my colleague fairly to the wall. She had told me, bit by bit, under
‘cried.’ I had supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I pressure, a great deal; but a small shifty spot on the wrong side
could literally – for the time, at all events – rejoice, under this of it all still sometimes brushed my brow like the wing of a bat;
fathomless charity, that they had not entirely disappeared. To and I remember how on this occasion – for the sleeping house
gaze into the depths of blue of the child’s eyes and pronounce and the concentration alike of our danger and our watch
their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of seemed to help – I felt the importance of giving the last jerk to
a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure the curtain. ‘I don’t believe anything so horrible,’ I recollect
my judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation. I couldn’t saying; ‘no, let us put it definitely, my dear, that I don’t. But if I
abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat to Mrs. Grose – did, you know, there’s a thing I should require now, just without
as I did there, over and over, in the small hours – that with their sparing you the least bit more – oh, not a scrap, come! – to get
voices in the air, their pressure on one’s heart, and their out of you. What was it you had in mind when, in our distress,
fragrant faces against one’s cheek, everything fell to the ground before Miles came back, over the letter from his school, you
but their incapacity and their beauty. It was a pity that, said, under my insistence, that you didn’t pretend for him that
somehow, to settle this once for all, I had equally to re- he had not literally EVER been ‘bad’? He has NOT literally ‘ever,’
enumerate the signs of subtlety that, in the afternoon, by the in these weeks that I myself have lived with him and so closely
lake had made a miracle of my show of self-possession. It was a watched him; he has been an imperturbable little prodigy of
pity to be obliged to reinvestigate the certitude of the moment delightful, lovable goodness. Therefore you might perfectly have
itself and repeat how it had come to me as a revelation that the made the claim for him if you had not, as it happened, seen an
inconceivable communion I then surprised was a matter, for exception to take. What was your exception, and to what
either party, of habit. It was a pity that I should have had to passage in your personal observation of him did you refer?’
quaver out again the reasons for my not having, in my delusion, It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity was not our
so much as questioned that the little girl saw our visitant even note, and, at any rate, before the gray dawn admonished us to
as I actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, by separate I had got my answer. What my friend had had in mind
just so much as she did thus see, to make me suppose she proved to be immensely to the purpose. It was neither more nor
didn’t, and at the same time, without showing anything, arrive less than the circumstance that for a period of several months
at a guess as to whether I myself did! It was a pity that I needed Quint and the boy had been perpetually together. It was in fact
once more to describe the portentous little activity by which she the very appropriate truth that she had ventured to criticize the
sought to divert my attention – the perceptible increase of propriety, to hint at the incongruity, of so close an alliance, and
movement, the greater intensity of play, the singing, the even to go so far on the subject as a frank overture to Miss
gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to romp. Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, requested

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her to mind her business, and the good woman had, on this, There was something in the boy that suggested to you,’ I
directly approached little Miles. What she had said to him, since continued, ‘that he covered and concealed their relation.’
I pressed, was that SHE liked to see young gentlemen not forget ‘Oh, he couldn’t prevent – ’
their station. ‘Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens,’ I fell, with
I pressed again, of course, at this. ‘You reminded him that vehemence, athinking, ‘what it shows that they must, to that
Quint was only a base menial?’ extent, have succeeded in making of him!’
‘As you might say! And it was his answer, for one thing, that ‘Ah, nothing that’s not nice NOW!’ Mrs. Grose lugubriously
was bad.’ pleaded.
‘And for another thing?’ I waited. ‘He repeated your words to ‘I don’t wonder you looked queer,’ I persisted, ‘when I
Quint?’ mentioned to you the letter from his school!’
‘No, not that. It’s just what he WOULDN’T!’ she could still ‘I doubt if I looked as queer as you!’ she retorted with homely
impress upon me. ‘I was sure, at any rate,’ she added, ‘that he force. ‘And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he
didn’t. But he denied certain occasions.’ such an angel now?’
‘What occasions?’ ‘Yes, indeed – and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, how?
‘When they had been about together quite as if Quint were Well,’ I said in my torment, ‘you must put it to me again, but I
his tutor – and a very grand one – and Miss Jessel only for the shall not be able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to me
little lady. When he had gone off with the fellow, I mean, and again!’ I cried in a way that made my friend stare. ‘There are
spent hours with him.’ directions in which I must not for the present let myself go.’
‘He then prevaricated about it – he said he hadn’t?’ Her Meanwhile I returned to her first example – the one to which
assent was clear enough to cause me to add in a moment: ‘I see. she had just previously referred – of the boy’s happy capacity for
He lied.’ an occasional slip. ‘If Quint – on your remonstrance at the time
‘Oh!’ Mrs. Grose mumbled. This was a suggestion that it you speak of – was a base menial, one of the things Miles said to
didn’t matter; which indeed she backed up by a further remark. you, I find myself guessing, was that you were another.’ Again
‘You see, after all, Miss Jessel didn’t mind. She didn’t forbid her admission was so adequate that I continued: ‘And you
him.’ forgave him that?’
I considered. ‘Did he put that to you as a justification?’ ‘Wouldn’t YOU?’
At this she dropped again. ‘No, he never spoke of it.’ ‘Oh, yes!’ And we exchanged there, in the stillness, a sound of
‘Never mentioned her in connection with Quint?’ the oddest amusement. Then I went on: ‘At all events, while he
She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. ‘Well, he was with the man – ’
didn’t show anything. He denied,’ she repeated; ‘he denied.’ ‘Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!’
Lord, how I pressed her now! ‘So that you could see he knew It suited me, too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean that it
what was between the two wretches?’ suited exactly the particularly deadly view I was in the very act
‘I don’t know – I don’t know!’ the poor woman groaned. of forbidding myself to entertain. But I so far succeeded in
‘You do know, you dear thing,’ I replied; ‘only you haven’t my checking the expression of this view that I will throw, just here,
dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity no further light on it than may be offered by the mention of my
and modesty and delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, final observation to Mrs. Grose. ‘His having lied and been
when you had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence, impudent are, I confess, less engaging specimens than I had
most of all made you miserable. But I shall get it out of you yet! hoped to have from you of the outbreak in him of the little

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natural man. Still,’ I mused, ‘They must do, for they make me
feel more than ever that I must watch.’
It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend’s face
how much more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her
anecdote struck me as presenting to my own tenderness an
occasion for doing. This came out when, at the schoolroom door,
she quitted me. ‘Surely you don’t accuse HIM – ’
‘Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me? Ah,
remember that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody.’

Chapter IX
Then, before shutting her out to go, by another passage, to her
own place, ‘I must just wait,’ I wound up.

I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, took

something from my consternation. A very few of them, in fact,
passing, in constant sight of my pupils, without a fresh
incident, sufficed to give to grievous fancies and even to odious
memories a kind of brush of the sponge. I have spoken of the
surrender to their extraordinary childish grace as a thing I could
actively cultivate, and it may be imagined if I neglected now to
address myself to this source for whatever it would yield.
Stranger than I can express, certainly, was the effort to struggle
against my new lights; it would doubtless have been, however, a
greater tension still had it not been so frequently successful. I
used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I
thought strange things about them; and the circumstances that
these things only made them more interesting was not by itself
a direct aid to keeping them in the dark. I trembled lest they
should see that they WERE so immensely more interesting.
Putting things at the worst, at all events, as in meditation I so
often did, any clouding of their innocence could only be –
blameless and foredoomed as they were – a reason the more for
taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible
impulse, I found myself catching them up and pressing them to
my heart. As soon as I had done so I used to say to myself:
‘What will they think of that? Doesn’t it betray too much?’ It
would have been easy to get into a sad, wild tangle about how
much I might betray; but the real account, I feel, of the hours of

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peace that I could still enjoy was that the immediate charm of to spoil; and the strangest if not the brightest thread in the
my companions was a beguilement still effective even under the pensive embroidery I just spoke of was the impression I might
shadow of the possibility that it was studied. For if it occurred have got, if I had dared to work it out, that he was under some
to me that I might occasionally excite suspicion by the little influence operating in his small intellectual life as a tremendous
outbreaks of my sharper passion for them, so too I remember incitement.
wondering if I mightn’t see a queerness in the traceable increase If it was easy to reflect, however, that such a boy could
of their own demonstrations. postpone school, it was at least as marked that for such a boy to
They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally have been ‘kicked out’ by a schoolmaster was a mystification
fond of me; which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a without end. Let me add that in their company now – and I was
graceful response in children perpetually bowed over and careful almost never to be out of it – I could follow no scent very
hugged. The homage of which they were so lavish succeeded, in far. We lived in a cloud of music and love and success and
truth, for my nerves, quite as well as if I never appeared to private theatricals. The musical sense in each of the children
myself, as I may say, literally to catch them at a purpose in it. was of the quickest, but the elder in especial had a marvelous
They had never, I think, wanted to do so many things for their knack of catching and repeating. The schoolroom piano broke
poor protectress; I mean – though they got their lessons better into all gruesome fancies; and when that failed there were
and better, which was naturally what would please her most – in confabulations in corners, with a sequel of one of them going
the way of diverting, entertaining, surprising her; reading her out in the highest spirits in order to ‘come in’ as something new.
passages, telling her stories, acting her charades, pouncing out I had had brothers myself, and it was no revelation to me that
at her, in disguises, as animals and historical characters, and little girls could be slavish idolaters of little boys. What
above all astonishing her by the ‘pieces’ they had secretly got by surpassed everything was that there was a little boy in the
heart and could interminably recite. I should never get to the world who could have for the inferior age, sex, and intelligence
bottom – were I to let myself go even now – of the prodigious so fine a consideration. They were extraordinarily at one, and to
private commentary, all under still more private correction, say that they never either quarreled or complained is to make
with which, in these days, I overscored their full hours. They the note of praise coarse for their quality of sweetness.
had shown me from the first a facility for everything, a general Sometimes, indeed, when I dropped into coarseness, I perhaps
faculty which, taking a fresh start, achieved remarkable flights. came across traces of little understandings between them by
They got their little tasks as if they loved them, and indulged, which one of them should keep me occupied while the other
from the mere exuberance of the gift, in the most unimposed slipped away. There is a naive side, I suppose, in all diplomacy;
little miracles of memory. They not only popped out at me as but if my pupils practiced upon me, it was surely with the
tigers and as Romans, but as Shakespeareans, astronomers, and minimum of grossness. It was all in the other quarter that, after
navigators. This was so singularly the case that it had a lull, the grossness broke out.
presumably much to do with the fact as to which, at the present I find that I really hang back; but I must take my plunge. In
day, I am at a loss for a different explanation: I allude to my going on with the record of what was hideous at Bly, I not only
unnatural composure on the subject of another school for challenge the most liberal faith – for which I little care; but –
Miles. What I remember is that I was content not, for the time, and this is another matter – I renew what I myself suffered, I
to open the question, and that contentment must have sprung again push my way through it to the end. There came suddenly
from the sense of his perpetually striking show of cleverness. an hour after which, as I look back, the affair seems to me to
He was too clever for a bad governess, for a parson’s daughter, have been all pure suffering; but I have at least reached the

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heart of it, and the straightest road out is doubtless to advance. rendered it unnecessary. Without it, the next instant, I saw that
One evening – with nothing to lead up or to prepare it – I felt there was someone on the stair. I speak of sequences, but I
the cold touch of the impression that had breathed on me the required no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself for a third
night of my arrival and which, much lighter then, as I have encounter with Quint. The apparition had reached the landing
mentioned, I should probably have made little of in memory halfway up and was therefore on the spot nearest the window,
had my subsequent sojourn been less agitated. I had not gone to where at sight of me, it stopped short and fixed me exactly as it
bed; I sat reading by a couple of candles. There was a roomful of had fixed me from the tower and from the garden. He knew me
old books at Bly – last-century fiction, some of it, which, to the as well as I knew him; and so, in the cold, faint twilight, with a
extent of a distinctly deprecated renown, but never to so much glimmer in the high glass and another on the polish of the oak
as that of a stray specimen, had reached the sequestered home stair below, we faced each other in our common intensity. He
and appealed to the unavowed curiosity of my youth. I was absolutely, on this occasion, a living, detestable, dangerous
remember that the book I had in my hand was Fielding’s presence. But that was not the wonder of wonders; I reserve
Amelia; also that I was wholly awake. I recall further both a this distinction for quite another circumstance: the
general conviction that it was horribly late and a particular circumstance that dread had unmistakably quitted me and that
objection to looking at my watch. I figure, finally, that the white there was nothing in me there that didn’t meet and measure
curtain draping, in the fashion of those days, the head of Flora’s him.
little bed, shrouded, as I had assured myself long before, the I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary moment, but
perfection of childish rest. I recollect in short that, though I was I had, thank God, no terror. And he knew I had not – I found
deeply interested in my author, I found myself, at the turn of a myself at the end of an instant magnificently aware of this. I
page and with his spell all scattered, looking straight up from felt, in a fierce rigor of confidence, that if I stood my ground a
him and hard at the door of my room. There was a moment minute I should cease – for the time, at least – to have him to
during which I listened, reminded of the faint sense I had had, reckon with; and during the minute, accordingly, the thing was
the first night, of there being something undefinably astir in the as human and hideous as a real interview: hideous just because
house, and noted the soft breath of the open casement just it WAS human, as human as to have met alone, in the small
move the half-drawn blind. Then, with all the marks of a hours, in a sleeping house, some enemy, some adventurer, some
deliberation that must have seemed magnificent had there been criminal. It was the dead silence of our long gaze at such close
anyone to admire it, I laid down my book, rose to my feet, and, quarters that gave the whole horror, huge as it was, its only
taking a candle, went straight out of the room and, from the note of the unnatural. If I had met a murderer in such a place
passage, on which my light made little impression, noiselessly and at such an hour, we still at least would have spoken.
closed and locked the door. Something would have passed, in life, between us; if nothing
I can say now neither what determined nor what guided me, had passed, one of us would have moved. The moment was so
but I went straight along the lobby, holding my candle high, till I prolonged that it would have taken but little more to make me
came within sight of the tall window that presided over the doubt if even I were in life. I can’t express what followed it save
great turn of the staircase. At this point I precipitately found by saying that the silence itself – which was indeed in a manner
myself aware of three things. They were practically an attestation of my strength – became the element into which
simultaneous, yet they had flashes of succession. My candle, I saw the figure disappear; in which I definitely saw it turn as I
under a bold flourish, went out, and I perceived, by the might have seen the low wretch to which it had once belonged
uncovered window, that the yielding dusk of earliest morning turn on receipt of an order, and pass, with my eyes on the

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villainous back that no hunch could have more disfigured,

straight down the staircase and into the darkness in which the
next bend was lost.

Chapter X
I remained awhile at the top of the stair, but with the effect
presently of understanding that when my visitor had gone, he
had gone: then I returned to my room. The foremost thing I saw
there by the light of the candle I had left burning was that
Flora’s little bed was empty; and on this I caught my breath with
all the terror that, five minutes before, I had been able to resist.
I dashed at the place in which I had left her lying and over which
(for the small silk counterpane and the sheets were disarranged)
the white curtains had been deceivingly pulled forward; then
my step, to my unutterable relief, produced an answering
sound: I perceived an agitation of the window blind, and the
child, ducking down, emerged rosily from the other side of it.
She stood there in so much of her candor and so little of her
nightgown, with her pink bare feet and the golden glow of her
curls. She looked intensely grave, and I had never had such a
sense of losing an advantage acquired (the thrill of which had
just been so prodigious) as on my consciousness that she
addressed me with a reproach. ‘You naughty: where HAVE you
been?’ – instead of challenging her own irregularity I found
myself arraigned and explaining. She herself explained, for that
matter, with the loveliest, eagerest simplicity. She had known
suddenly, as she lay there, that I was out of the room, and had
jumped up to see what had become of me. I had dropped, with
the joy of her reappearance, back into my chair – feeling then,
and then only, a little faint; and she had pattered straight over

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to me, thrown herself upon my knee, given herself to be held might come back, you dear, and that you HAVE!’ And after a
with the flame of the candle full in the wonderful little face that little, when she had got into bed, I had, for a long time, by
was still flushed with sleep. I remember closing my eyes an almost sitting on her to hold her hand, to prove that I
instant, yieldingly, consciously, as before the excess of recognized the pertinence of my return.
something beautiful that shone out of the blue of her own. ‘You You may imagine the general complexion, from that moment,
were looking for me out of the window?’ I said. ‘You thought I of my nights. I repeatedly sat up till I didn’t know when; I
might be walking in the grounds?’ selected moments when my roommate unmistakably slept, and,
‘Well, you know, I thought someone was’ – she never stealing out, took noiseless turns in the passage and even
blanched as she smiled out that at me. pushed as far as to where I had last met Quint. But I never met
Oh, how I looked at her now! ‘And did you see anyone?’ him there again; and I may as well say at once that I on no other
‘Ah, NO!’ she returned, almost with the full privilege of occasion saw him in the house. I just missed, on the staircase,
childish inconsequence, resentfully, though with a long on the other hand, a different adventure. Looking down it from
sweetness in her little drawl of the negative. the top I once recognized the presence of a woman seated on
At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I absolutely one of the lower steps with her back presented to me, her body
believed she lied; and if I once more closed my eyes it was before half-bowed and her head, in an attitude of woe, in her hands. I
the dazzle of the three or four possible ways in which I might had been there but an instant, however, when she vanished
take this up. One of these, for a moment, tempted me with such without looking round at me. I knew, nonetheless, exactly what
singular intensity that, to withstand it, I must have gripped my dreadful face she had to show; and I wondered whether, if
little girl with a spasm that, wonderfully, she submitted to instead of being above I had been below, I should have had, for
without a cry or a sign of fright. Why not break out at her on going up, the same nerve I had lately shown Quint. Well, there
the spot and have it all over? – give it to her straight in her continued to be plenty of chance for nerve. On the eleventh
lovely little lighted face? ‘You see, you see, you KNOW that you night after my latest encounter with that gentleman – they
do and that you already quite suspect I believe it; therefore, why were all numbered now – I had an alarm that perilously skirted
not frankly confess it to me, so that we may at least live with it it and that indeed, from the particular quality of its
together and learn perhaps, in the strangeness of our fate, unexpectedness, proved quite my sharpest shock. It was
where we are and what it means?’ This solicitation dropped, precisely the first night during this series that, weary with
alas, as it came: if I could immediately have succumbed to it I watching, I had felt that I might again without laxity lay myself
might have spared myself – well, you’ll see what. Instead of down at my old hour. I slept immediately and, as I afterward
succumbing I sprang again to my feet, looked at her bed, and knew, till about one o’clock; but when I woke it was to sit
took a helpless middle way. ‘Why did you pull the curtain over straight up, as completely roused as if a hand had shook me. I
the place to make me think you were still there?’ had left a light burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant
Flora luminously considered; after which, with her little certainty that Flora had extinguished it. This brought me to my
divine smile: ‘Because I don’t like to frighten you!’ feet and straight, in the darkness, to her bed, which I found she
‘But if I had, by your idea, gone out – ?’ had left. A glance at the window enlightened me further, and
She absolutely declined to be puzzled; she turned her eyes to the striking of a match completed the picture.
the flame of the candle as if the question were as irrelevant, or The child had again got up – this time blowing out the taper,
at any rate as impersonal, as Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine. and had again, for some purpose of observation or response,
‘Oh, but you know,’ she quite adequately answered, ‘that you squeezed in behind the blind and was peering out into the

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night. That she now saw – as she had not, I had satisfied myself, not for years, though kept by Mrs. Grose in exemplary order,
the previous time – was proved to me by the fact that she was been occupied. I had often admired it and I knew my way about
disturbed neither by my reillumination nor by the haste I made in it; I had only, after just faltering at the first chill gloom of its
to get into slippers and into a wrap. Hidden, protected, disuse, to pass across it and unbolt as quietly as I could one of
absorbed, she evidently rested on the sill – the casement opened the shutters. Achieving this transit, I uncovered the glass
forward – and gave herself up. There was a great still moon to without a sound and, applying my face to the pane, was able,
help her, and this fact had counted in my quick decision. She the darkness without being much less than within, to see that I
was face to face with the apparition we had met at the lake, and commanded the right direction. Then I saw something more.
could now communicate with it as she had not then been able to The moon made the night extraordinarily penetrable and
do. What I, on my side, had to care for was, without disturbing showed me on the lawn a person, diminished by distance, who
her, to reach, from the corridor, some other window in the same stood there motionless and as if fascinated, looking up to where
quarter. I got to the door without her hearing me; I got out of it, I had appeared – looking, that is, not so much straight at me as
closed it, and listened, from the other side, for some sound at something that was apparently above me. There was clearly
from her. While I stood in the passage I had my eyes on her another person above me – there was a person on the tower; but
brother’s door, which was but ten steps off and which, the presence on the lawn was not in the least what I had
indescribably, produced in me a renewal of the strange impulse conceived and had confidently hurried to meet. The presence on
that I lately spoke of as my temptation. What if I should go the lawn – I felt sick as I made it out – was poor little Miles
straight in and march to HIS window? – what if, by risking to himself.
his boyish bewilderment a revelation of my motive, I should
throw across the rest of the mystery the long halter of my
boldness?
This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his
threshold and pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured
to myself what might portentously be; I wondered if his bed
were also empty and he too were secretly at watch. It was a
deep, soundless minute, at the end of which my impulse failed.
He was quiet; he might be innocent; the risk was hideous; I
turned away. There was a figure in the grounds – a figure
prowling for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged;
but it was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. I
hesitated afresh, but on other grounds and only for a few
seconds; then I had made my choice. There were empty rooms at
Bly, and it was only a question of choosing the right one. The
right one suddenly presented itself to me as the lower one –
though high above the gardens – in the solid corner of the
house that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was a large,
square chamber, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the
extravagant size of which made it so inconvenient that it had

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It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; the rigor
with which I kept my pupils in sight making it often difficult to
meet her privately, and the more as we each felt the importance
of not provoking – on the part of the servants quite as much as
on that of the children – any suspicion of a secret flurry or that
of a discussion of mysteries. I drew a great security in this
particular from her mere smooth aspect. There was nothing in
her fresh face to pass on to others my horrible confidences. She
believed me, I was sure, absolutely: if she hadn’t I don’t know
what would have become of me, for I couldn’t have borne the
business alone. But she was a magnificent monument to the
blessing of a want of imagination, and if she could see in our
little charges nothing but their beauty and amiability, their
happiness and cleverness, she had no direct communication
with the sources of my trouble. If they had been at all visibly
blighted or battered, she would doubtless have grown, on
tracing it back, haggard enough to match them; as matters
stood, however, I could feel her, when she surveyed them, with
her large white arms folded and the habit of serenity in all her
look, thank the Lord’s mercy that if they were ruined the pieces
would still serve. Flights of fancy gave place, in her mind, to a
steady fireside glow, and I had already begun to perceive how,
with the development of the conviction that – as time went on
without a public accident – our young things could, after all,
look out for themselves, she addressed her greatest solicitude to

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the sad case presented by their instructress. That, for myself, Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had
was a sound simplification: I could engage that, to the world, my wondered – oh, HOW I had wondered! – if he were groping
face should tell no tales, but it would have been, in the about in his little mind for something plausible and not too
conditions, an immense added strain to find myself anxious grotesque. It would tax his invention, certainly, and I felt, this
about hers. time, over his real embarrassment, a curious thrill of triumph.
At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He couldn’t play any
pressure, on the terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get out of it?
afternoon sun was now agreeable; and we sat there together There beat in me indeed, with the passionate throb of this
while, before us, at a distance, but within call if we wished, the question an equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce I should. I
children strolled to and fro in one of their most manageable was confronted at last, as never yet, with all the risk attached
moods. They moved slowly, in unison, below us, over the lawn, even now to sounding my own horrid note. I remember in fact
the boy, as they went, reading aloud from a storybook and that as we pushed into his little chamber, where the bed had not
passing his arm round his sister to keep her quite in touch. Mrs. been slept in at all and the window, uncovered to the
Grose watched them with positive placidity; then I caught the moonlight, made the place so clear that there was no need of
suppressed intellectual creak with which she conscientiously striking a match – I remember how I suddenly dropped, sank
turned to take from me a view of the back of the tapestry. I had upon the edge of the bed from the force of the idea that he must
made her a receptacle of lurid things, but there was an odd know how he really, as they say, ‘had’ me. He could do what he
recognition of my superiority – my accomplishments and my liked, with all his cleverness to help him, so long as I should
function – in her patience under my pain. She offered her mind continue to defer to the old tradition of the criminality of those
to my disclosures as, had I wished to mix a witch’s broth and caretakers of the young who minister to superstitions and fears.
proposed it with assurance, she would have held out a large He ‘had’ me indeed, and in a cleft stick; for who would ever
clean saucepan. This had become thoroughly her attitude by the absolve me, who would consent that I should go unhung, if, by
time that, in my recital of the events of the night, I reached the the faintest tremor of an overture, I were the first to introduce
point of what Miles had said to me when, after seeing him, at into our perfect intercourse an element so dire? No, no: it was
such a monstrous hour, almost on the very spot where he useless to attempt to convey to Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely
happened now to be, I had gone down to bring him in; choosing less so to attempt to suggest here, how, in our short, stiff brush
then, at the window, with a concentrated need of not alarming in the dark, he fairly shook me with admiration. I was of course
the house, rather that method than a signal more resonant. I thoroughly kind and merciful; never, never yet had I placed on
had left her meanwhile in little doubt of my small hope of his little shoulders hands of such tenderness as those with
representing with success even to her actual sympathy my sense which, while I rested against the bed, I held him there well
of the real splendor of the little inspiration with which, after I under fire. I had no alternative but, in form at least, to put it to
had got him into the house, the boy met my final articulate him.
challenge. As soon as I appeared in the moonlight on the ‘You must tell me now – and all the truth. What did you go
terrace, he had come to me as straight as possible; on which I out for? What were you doing there?’
had taken his hand without a word and led him, through the I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful
dark spaces, up the staircase where Quint had so hungrily eyes, and the uncovering of his little teeth shine to me in the
hovered for him, along the lobby where I had listened and dusk. ‘If I tell you why, will you understand?’ My heart, at this,
trembled, and so to his forsaken room. leaped into my mouth. WOULD he tell me why? I found no

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sound on my lips to press it, and I was aware of replying only

with a vague, repeated, grimacing nod. He was gentleness itself,
and while I wagged my head at him he stood there more than
ever a little fairy prince. It was his brightness indeed that gave
me a respite. Would it be so great if he were really going to tell
me? ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘just exactly in order that you should
do this.’
‘Do what?’
‘Think me – for a change – BAD!’ I shall never forget the

Chapter XII
sweetness and gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor
how, on top of it, he bent forward and kissed me. It was
practically the end of everything. I met his kiss and I had to
make, while I folded him for a minute in my arms, the most
stupendous effort not to cry. He had given exactly the account The particular impression I had received proved in the morning
of himself that permitted least of my going behind it, and it was light, I repeat, not quite successfully presentable to Mrs. Grose,
only with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it that, as I though I reinforced it with the mention of still another remark
presently glanced about the room, I could say – that he had made before we separated. ‘It all lies in half a dozen
‘Then you didn’t undress at all?’ words,’ I said to her, ‘words that really settle the matter. ‘Think,
He fairly glittered in the gloom. ‘Not at all. I sat up and read.’ you know, what I MIGHT do!’ He threw that off to show me how
‘And when did you go down?’ good he is. He knows down to the ground what he ‘might’ do.
‘At midnight. When I’m bad I AM bad!’ That’s what he gave them a taste of at school.’
‘I see, I see – it’s charming. But how could you be sure I would ‘Lord, you do change!’ cried my friend.
know it?’ ‘I don’t change – I simply make it out. The four, depend upon it,
‘Oh, I arranged that with Flora.’ His answers rang out with a perpetually meet. If on either of these last nights you had been with
readiness! ‘She was to get up and look out.’ either child, you would clearly have understood.The more I’ve watched
‘Which is what she did do.’ It was I who fell into the trap! and waited the more I’ve felt that if there were nothing else to make
‘So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking at, it sure it would be made so by the systematic silence of each. NEVER,
you also looked – you saw.’ by a slip of the tongue, have they so much as alluded to either of their
‘While you,’ I concurred, ‘caught your death in the night air!’ old friends, any more than Miles has alluded to his expulsion. Oh,
He literally bloomed so from this exploit that he could afford yes, we may sit here and look at them, and they may show off to us
radiantly to assent. ‘How otherwise should I have been bad there to their fill; but even while they pretend to be lost in their
enough?’ he asked. Then, after another embrace, the incident fairytale they’re steeped in their vision of the dead restored. He’s not
and our interview closed on my recognition of all the reserves reading to her,’ I declared; ‘they’re talking of THEM – they’re talking
of goodness that, for his joke, he had been able to draw upon. horrors! I go on, I know, as if I were crazy; and it’s a wonder I’m not.
What I’ve seen would have made YOU so; but it has only made me
more lucid, made me get hold of still other things.’
My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming
creatures who were victims of it, passing and repassing in their

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interlocked sweetness, gave my colleague something to hold on which was to make me more explicit. ‘They don’t know, as yet,
by; and I felt how tight she held as, without stirring in the quite how – but they’re trying hard. They’re seen only across, as
breath of my passion, she covered them still with her eyes. ‘Of it were, and beyond – in strange places and on high places, the
what other things have you got hold?’ top of towers, the roof of houses, the outside of windows, the
‘Why, of the very things that have delighted, fascinated, and further edge of pools; but there’s a deep design, on either side,
yet, at bottom, as I now so strangely see, mystified and troubled to shorten the distance and overcome the obstacle; and the
me. Their more than earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural success of the tempters is only a question of time. They’ve only
goodness. It’s a game,’ I went on; ‘it’s a policy and a fraud!’ to keep to their suggestions of danger.’
‘On the part of little darlings – ?’ ‘For the children to come?’
‘As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as that seems!’ The very ‘And perish in the attempt!’ Mrs. Grose slowly got up, and I
act of bringing it out really helped me to trace it – follow it all scrupulously added: ‘Unless, of course, we can prevent!’
up and piece it all together. ‘They haven’t been good – they’ve Standing there before me while I kept my seat, she visibly
only been absent. It has been easy to live with them, because turned things over. ‘Their uncle must do the preventing. He
they’re simply leading a life of their own. They’re not mine – must take them away.’
they’re not ours. They’re his and they’re hers!’ ‘And who’s to make him?’
‘Quint’s and that woman’s?’ She had been scanning the distance, but she now dropped on
‘Quint’s and that woman’s. They want to get to them.’ me a foolish face. ‘You, miss.’
Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study them! ‘By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little
‘But for what?’ nephew and niece mad?’
‘For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the ‘But if they ARE, miss?’
pair put into them. And to ply them with that evil still, to keep ‘And if I am myself, you mean? That’s charming news to be
up the work of demons, is what brings the others back.’ sent him by a governess whose prime undertaking was to give
‘Laws!’ said my friend under her breath. The exclamation was him no worry.’
homely, but it revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. ‘Yes, he
what, in the bad time – for there had been a worse even than do hate worry. That was the great reason – ’
this! – must have occurred. There could have been no such ‘Why those fiends took him in so long? No doubt, though his
justification for me as the plain assent of her experience to indifference must have been awful. As I’m not a fiend, at any
whatever depth of depravity I found credible in our brace of rate, I shouldn’t take him in.’
scoundrels. It was in obvious submission of memory that she My companion, after an instant and for all answer, sat down
brought out after a moment: ‘They WERE rascals! But what can again and grasped my arm. ‘Make him at any rate come to you.’
they now do?’ she pursued. I stared. ‘To ME?’ I had a sudden fear of what she might do.
‘Do?’ I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, as they passed at ‘‘Him’?’
their distance, paused an instant in their walk and looked at us. ‘He ought to BE here – he ought to help.’
‘Don’t they do enough?’ I demanded in a lower tone, while the I quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her a queerer
children, having smiled and nodded and kissed hands to us, face than ever yet. ‘You see me asking him for a visit?’ No, with
resumed their exhibition. We were held by it a minute; then I her eyes on my face she evidently couldn’t. Instead of it even –
answered: ‘They can destroy them!’ At this my companion did as a woman reads another – she could see what I myself saw: his
turn, but the inquiry she launched was a silent one, the effect of derision, his amusement, his contempt for the breakdown of my

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resignation at being left alone and for the fine machinery I had
set in motion to attract his attention to my slighted charms.
She didn’t know – no one knew – how proud I had been to serve
him and to stick to our terms; yet she nonetheless took the
measure, I think, of the warning I now gave her. ‘If you should
so lose your head as to appeal to him for me – ’
She was really frightened. ‘Yes, miss?’
‘I would leave, on the spot, both him and you.’

Chapter XIII
It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved
quite as much as ever an effort beyond my strength – offered, in
close quarters, difficulties as insurmountable as before. This
situation continued a month, and with new aggravations and
particular notes, the note above all, sharper and sharper, of the
small ironic consciousness on the part of my pupils. It was not, I
am as sure today as I was sure then, my mere infernal
imagination: it was absolutely traceable that they were aware of
my predicament and that this strange relation made, in a
manner, for a long time, the air in which we moved. I don’t
mean that they had their tongues in their cheeks or did
anything vulgar, for that was not one of their dangers: I do
mean, on the other hand, that the element of the unnamed and
untouched became, between us, greater than any other, and
that so much avoidance could not have been so successfully
effected without a great deal of tacit arrangement. It was as if,
at moments, we were perpetually coming into sight of subjects
before which we must stop short, turning suddenly out of alleys
that we perceived to be blind, closing with a little bang that
made us look at each other – for, like all bangs, it was something
louder than we had intended – the doors we had indiscreetly
opened. All roads lead to Rome, and there were times when it
might have struck us that almost every branch of study or
subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground. Forbidden
ground was the question of the return of the dead in general

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and of whatever, in especial, might survive, in memory, of the appearance of Miss Jessel. The summer had turned, the summer
friends little children had lost. There were days when I could had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out
have sworn that one of them had, with a small invisible nudge, half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and withered
said to the other: ‘She thinks she’ll do it this time – but she garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a
WON’T!’ To ‘do it’ would have been to indulge for instance – and theater after the performance – all strewn with crumpled
for once in a way – in some direct reference to the lady who had playbills. There were exactly states of the air, conditions of
prepared them for my discipline. They had a delightful endless sound and of stillness, unspeakable impressions of the KIND of
appetite for passages in my own history, to which I had again ministering moment, that brought back to me, long enough to
and again treated them; they were in possession of everything catch it, the feeling of the medium in which, that June evening
that had ever happened to me, had had, with every out of doors, I had had my first sight of Quint, and in which,
circumstance the story of my smallest adventures and of those too, at those other instants, I had, after seeing him through the
of my brothers and sisters and of the cat and the dog at home, window, looked for him in vain in the circle of shrubbery. I
as well as many particulars of the eccentric nature of my father, recognized the signs, the portents – I recognized the moment,
of the furniture and arrangement of our house, and of the the spot. But they remained unaccompanied and empty, and I
conversation of the old women of our village. There were things continued unmolested; if unmolested one could call a young
enough, taking one with another, to chatter about, if one went woman whose sensibility had, in the most extraordinary
very fast and knew by instinct when to go round. They pulled fashion, not declined but deepened. I had said in my talk with
with an art of their own the strings of my invention and my Mrs. Grose on that horrid scene of Flora’s by the lake – and had
memory; and nothing else perhaps, when I thought of such perplexed her by so saying – that it would from that moment
occasions afterward, gave me so the suspicion of being watched distress me much more to lose my power than to keep it. I had
from under cover. It was in any case over MY life, MY past, and then expressed what was vividly in my mind: the truth that,
MY friends alone that we could take anything like our ease – a whether the children really saw or not – since, that is, it was not
state of affairs that led them sometimes without the least yet definitely proved – I greatly preferred, as a safeguard, the
pertinence to break out into sociable reminders. I was invited – fullness of my own exposure. I was ready to know the very
with no visible connection – to repeat afresh Goody Gosling’s worst that was to be known. What I had then had an ugly
celebrated mot or to confirm the details already supplied as to glimpse of was that my eyes might be sealed just while theirs
the cleverness of the vicarage pony. were most opened. Well, my eyes WERE sealed, it appeared, at
It was partly at such junctures as these and partly at quite present – a consummation for which it seemed blasphemous
different ones that, with the turn my matters had now taken, not to thank God. There was, alas, a difficulty about that: I
my predicament, as I have called it, grew most sensible. The fact would have thanked him with all my soul had I not had in a
that the days passed for me without another encounter ought, proportionate measure this conviction of the secret of my
it would have appeared, to have done something toward pupils.
soothing my nerves. Since the light brush, that second night on How can I retrace today the strange steps of my obsession?
the upper landing, of the presence of a woman at the foot of the There were times of our being together when I would have been
stair, I had seen nothing, whether in or out of the house, that ready to swear that, literally, in my presence, but with my direct
one had better not have seen. There was many a corner round sense of it closed, they had visitors who were known and were
which I expected to come upon Quint, and many a situation welcome. Then it was that, had I not been deterred by the very
that, in a merely sinister way, would have favored the chance that such an injury might prove greater than the injury

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to be averted, my exultation would have broken out. ‘They’re addressing to their younger victims some yet more infernal
here, they’re here, you little wretches,’ I would have cried, ‘and message or more vivid image than they had thought good
you can’t deny it now!’ The little wretches denied it with all the enough for myself.
added volume of their sociability and their tenderness, in just What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel idea
the crystal depths of which – like the flash of a fish in a stream – that, whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw MORE – things
the mockery of their advantage peeped up. The shock, in truth, terrible and unguessable and that sprang from dreadful
had sunk into me still deeper than I knew on the night when, passages of intercourse in the past. Such things naturally left on
looking out to see either Quint or Miss Jessel under the stars, I the surface, for the time, a chill which we vociferously denied
had beheld the boy over whose rest I watched and who had that we felt; and we had, all three, with repetition, got into such
immediately brought in with him – had straightway, there, splendid training that we went, each time, almost automatically,
turned it on me – the lovely upward look with which, from the to mark the close of the incident, through the very same
battlements above me, the hideous apparition of Quint had movements. It was striking of the children, at all events, to kiss
played. If it was a question of a scare, my discovery on this me inveterately with a kind of wild irrelevance and never to fail
occasion had scared me more than any other, and it was in the – one or the other – of the precious question that had helped us
condition of nerves produced by it that I made my actual through many a peril. ‘When do you think he WILL come? Don’t
inductions. They harassed me so that sometimes, at odd you think we OUGHT to write?’ – there was nothing like that
moments, I shut myself up audibly to rehearse – it was at once a inquiry, we found by experience, for carrying off an
fantastic relief and a renewed despair – the manner in which I awkwardness. ‘He’ of course was their uncle in Harley Street;
might come to the point. I approached it from one side and the and we lived in much profusion of theory that he might at any
other while, in my room, I flung myself about, but I always moment arrive to mingle in our circle. It was impossible to have
broke down in the monstrous utterance of names. As they died given less encouragement than he had done to such a doctrine,
away on my lips, I said to myself that I should indeed help them but if we had not had the doctrine to fall back upon we should
to represent something infamous, if, by pronouncing them, I have deprived each other of some of our finest exhibitions. He
should violate as rare a little case of instinctive delicacy as any never wrote to them – that may have been selfish, but it was a
schoolroom, probably, had ever known. When I said to myself: part of the flattery of his trust of me; for the way in which a
‘THEY have the manners to be silent, and you, trusted as you man pays his highest tribute to a woman is apt to be but by the
are, the baseness to speak!’ I felt myself crimson and I covered more festal celebration of one of the sacred laws of his comfort;
my face with my hands. After these secret scenes I chattered and I held that I carried out the spirit of the pledge given not to
more than ever, going on volubly enough till one of our appeal to him when I let my charges understand that their own
prodigious, palpable hushes occurred – I can call them nothing letters were but charming literary exercises. They were too
else – the strange, dizzy lift or swim (I try for terms!) into a beautiful to be posted; I kept them myself; I have them all to
stillness, a pause of all life, that had nothing to do with the this hour. This was a rule indeed which only added to the satiric
more or less noise that at the moment we might be engaged in effect of my being plied with the supposition that he might at
making and that I could hear through any deepened any moment be among us. It was exactly as if my charges knew
exhilaration or quickened recitation or louder strum of the how almost more awkward than anything else that might be for
piano. Then it was that the others, the outsiders, were there. me. There appears to me, moreover, as I look back, no note in all
Though they were not angels, they ‘passed,’ as the French say, this more extraordinary than the mere fact that, in spite of my
causing me, while they stayed, to tremble with the fear of their tension and of their triumph, I never lost patience with them.

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Adorable they must in truth have been, I now reflect, that I

didn’t in these days hate them! Would exasperation, however, if
relief had longer been postponed, finally have betrayed me? It
little matters, for relief arrived. I call it relief, though it was only
the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a
thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. It was at least change,
and it came with a rush.

Chapter XIV
Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles
at my side and his sister, in advance of us and at Mrs. Grose’s,
well in sight. It was a crisp, clear day, the first of its order for
some time; the night had brought a touch of frost, and the
autumn air, bright and sharp, made the church bells almost gay.
It was an odd accident of thought that I should have happened
at such a moment to be particularly and very gratefully struck
with the obedience of my little charges. Why did they never
resent my inexorable, my perpetual society? Something or other
had brought nearer home to me that I had all but pinned the
boy to my shawl and that, in the way our companions were
marshaled before me, I might have appeared to provide against
some danger of rebellion. I was like a gaoler with an eye to
possible surprises and escapes. But all this belonged – I mean
their magnificent little surrender – just to the special array of
the facts that were most abysmal. Turned out for Sunday by his
uncle’s tailor, who had had a free hand and a notion of pretty
waistcoats and of his grand little air, Miles’s whole title to
independence, the rights of his sex and situation, were so
stamped upon him that if he had suddenly struck for freedom I
should have had nothing to say. I was by the strangest of
chances wondering how I should meet him when the revolution
unmistakably occurred. I call it a revolution because I now see
how, with the word he spoke, the curtain rose on the last act of
my dreadful drama, and the catastrophe was precipitated. ‘Look

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here, my dear, you know,’ he charmingly said, ‘when in the ‘Except just that one night, you know – !’
world, please, am I going back to school?’ ‘That one night?’ I couldn’t look as straight as he.
Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough, ‘Why, when I went down – went out of the house.’
particularly as uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe with ‘Oh, yes. But I forget what you did it for.’
which, at all interlocutors, but above all at his eternal ‘You forget?’ – he spoke with the sweet extravagance of
governess, he threw off intonations as if he were tossing roses. childish reproach. ‘Why, it was to show you I could!’
There was something in them that always made one ‘catch,’ and ‘Oh, yes, you could.’
I caught, at any rate, now so effectually that I stopped as short ‘And I can again.’
as if one of the trees of the park had fallen across the road. I felt that I might, perhaps, after all, succeed in keeping my
There was something new, on the spot, between us, and he was wits about me. ‘Certainly. But you won’t.’
perfectly aware that I recognized it, though, to enable me to do ‘No, not THAT again. It was nothing.’
so, he had no need to look a whit less candid and charming than ‘It was nothing,’ I said. ‘But we must go on.’
usual. I could feel in him how he already, from my at first He resumed our walk with me, passing his hand into my arm.
finding nothing to reply, perceived the advantage he had gained. ‘Then when AM I going back?’
I was so slow to find anything that he had plenty of time, after a I wore, in turning it over, my most responsible air. ‘Were you
minute, to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive smile: very happy at school?’
‘You know, my dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady ALWAYS He just considered. ‘Oh, I’m happy enough anywhere!’
– !’ His ‘my dear’ was constantly on his lips for me, and nothing ‘Well, then,’ I quavered, ‘if you’re just as happy here – !’
could have expressed more the exact shade of the sentiment ‘Ah, but that isn’t everything! Of course YOU know a lot – ’
with which I desired to inspire my pupils than its fond ‘But you hint that you know almost as much?’ I risked as he
familiarity. It was so respectfully easy. paused.
But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick my own ‘Not half I want to!’ Miles honestly professed. ‘But it isn’t so
phrases! I remember that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I much that.’
seemed to see in the beautiful face with which he watched me ‘What is it, then?’
how ugly and queer I looked. ‘And always with the same lady?’ I ‘Well – I want to see more life.’
returned. ‘I see; I see.’ We had arrived within sight of the church and of
He neither blanched nor winked. The whole thing was various persons, including several of the household of Bly, on
virtually out between us. ‘Ah, of course, she’s a jolly, ‘perfect’ their way to it and clustered about the door to see us go in. I
lady; but, after all, I’m a fellow, don’t you see? that’s – well, quickened our step; I wanted to get there before the question
getting on.’ between us opened up much further; I reflected hungrily that,
I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly. ‘Yes, for more than an hour, he would have to be silent; and I thought
you’re getting on.’ Oh, but I felt helpless! with envy of the comparative dusk of the pew and of the almost
I have kept to this day the heartbreaking little idea of how he spiritual help of the hassock on which I might bend my knees. I
seemed to know that and to play with it. ‘And you can’t say I’ve seemed literally to be running a race with some confusion to
not been awfully good, can you?’ which he was about to reduce me, but I felt that he had got in
I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I felt how much first when, before we had even entered the churchyard, he threw
better it would have been to walk on, I was not yet quite able. out –
‘No, I can’t say that, Miles.’ ‘I want my own sort!’

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It literally made me bound forward. ‘There are not many of

your own sort, Miles!’ I laughed. ‘Unless perhaps dear little
Flora!’
‘You really compare me to a baby girl?’
This found me singularly weak. ‘Don’t you, then, LOVE our
sweet Flora?’
‘If I didn’t – and you, too; if I didn’t – !’ he repeated as if
retreating for a jump, yet leaving his thought so unfinished
that, after we had come into the gate, another stop, which he

Chapter XV
imposed on me by the pressure of his arm, had become
inevitable. Mrs. Grose and Flora had passed into the church, the
other worshippers had followed, and we were, for the minute,
alone among the old, thick graves. We had paused, on the path
from the gate, by a low, oblong, tablelike tomb. The business was practically settled from the moment I never
‘Yes, if you didn’t – ?’ followed him. It was a pitiful surrender to agitation, but my being
He looked, while I waited, at the graves. ‘Well, you know aware of this had somehow no power to restore me. I only sat there
what!’ But he didn’t move, and he presently produced on my tomb and read into what my little friend had said to me the
something that made me drop straight down on the stone slab, fullness of its meaning; by the time I had grasped the whole of
as if suddenly to rest. ‘Does my uncle think what YOU think?’ which I had also embraced, for absence, the pretext that I was
I markedly rested. ‘How do you know what I think?’ ashamed to offer my pupils and the rest of the congregation such
‘Ah, well, of course I don’t; for it strikes me you never tell me. an example of delay. What I said to myself above all was that Miles
But I mean does HE know?’ had got something out of me and that the proof of it, for him,
‘Know what, Miles?’ would be just this awkward collapse. He had got out of me that
‘Why, the way I’m going on.’ there was something I was much afraid of and that he should
I perceived quickly enough that I could make, to this inquiry, probably be able to make use of my fear to gain, for his own
no answer that would not involve something of a sacrifice of my purpose, more freedom. My fear was of having to deal with the
employer. Yet it appeared to me that we were all, at Bly, intolerable question of the grounds of his dismissal from school,
sufficiently sacrificed to make that venial. ‘I don’t think your for that was really but the question of the horrors gathered behind.
uncle much cares.’ That his uncle should arrive to treat with me of these things was a
Miles, on this, stood looking at me. ‘Then don’t you think he solution that, strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired to
can be made to?’ bring on; but I could so little face the ugliness and the pain of it
‘In what way?’ that I simply procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth. The
‘Why, by his coming down.’ boy, to my deep discomposure, was immensely in the right, was in
‘But who’ll get him to come down?’ a position to say to me: ‘Either you clear up with my guardian the
‘I will!’ the boy said with extraordinary brightness and mystery of this interruption of my studies, or you cease to expect
emphasis. He gave me another look charged with that me to lead with you a life that’s so unnatural for a boy.’ What was so
expression and then marched off alone into church. unnatural for the particular boy I was concerned with was this
sudden revelation of a consciousness and a plan.

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That was what really overcame me, what prevented my going obstacles, I remember sinking down at the foot of the staircase
in. I walked round the church, hesitating, hovering; I reflected – suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, with a
that I had already, with him, hurt myself beyond repair. revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month
Therefore I could patch up nothing, and it was too extreme an before, in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil
effort to squeeze beside him into the pew: he would be so much things, I had seen the specter of the most horrible of women. At
more sure than ever to pass his arm into mine and make me sit this I was able to straighten myself; I went the rest of the way
there for an hour in close, silent contact with his commentary up; I made, in my bewilderment, for the schoolroom, where
on our talk. For the first minute since his arrival I wanted to get there were objects belonging to me that I should have to take.
away from him. As I paused beneath the high east window and But I opened the door to find again, in a flash, my eyes
listened to the sounds of worship, I was taken with an impulse unsealed. In the presence of what I saw I reeled straight back
that might master me, I felt, completely should I give it the least upon my resistance.
encouragement. I might easily put an end to my predicament by Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person
getting away altogether. Here was my chance; there was no one whom, without my previous experience, I should have taken at
to stop me; I could give the whole thing up – turn my back and the first blush for some housemaid who might have stayed at
retreat. It was only a question of hurrying again, for a few home to look after the place and who, availing herself of rare
preparations, to the house which the attendance at church of so relief from observation and of the schoolroom table and my
many of the servants would practically have left unoccupied. No pens, ink, and paper, had applied herself to the considerable
one, in short, could blame me if I should just drive desperately effort of a letter to her sweetheart. There was an effort in the
off. What was it to get away if I got away only till dinner? That way that, while her arms rested on the table, her hands with
would be in a couple of hours, at the end of which – I had the evident weariness supported her head; but at the moment I
acute prevision – my little pupils would play at innocent wonder took this in I had already become aware that, in spite of my
about my nonappearance in their train. entrance, her attitude strangely persisted. Then it was – with
‘What DID you do, you naughty, bad thing? Why in the world, the very act of its announcing itself – that her identity flared up
to worry us so – and take our thoughts off, too, don’t you know? in a change of posture. She rose, not as if she had heard me, but
– did you desert us at the very door?’ I couldn’t meet such with an indescribable grand melancholy of indifference and
questions nor, as they asked them, their false little lovely eyes; detachment, and, within a dozen feet of me, stood there as my
yet it was all so exactly what I should have to meet that, as the vile predecessor. Dishonored and tragic, she was all before me;
prospect grew sharp to me, I at last let myself go. but even as I fixed and, for memory, secured it, the awful image
I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away; I passed away. Dark as midnight in her black dress, her haggard
came straight out of the churchyard and, thinking hard, beauty and her unutterable woe, she had looked at me long
retraced my steps through the park. It seemed to me that by the enough to appear to say that her right to sit at my table was as
time I reached the house I had made up my mind I would fly. good as mine to sit at hers. While these instants lasted, indeed,
The Sunday stillness both of the approaches and of the interior, I had the extraordinary chill of feeling that it was I who was the
in which I met no one, fairly excited me with a sense of intruder. It was as a wild protest against it that, actually
opportunity. Were I to get off quickly, this way, I should get off addressing her – ’You terrible, miserable woman!’ – I heard
without a scene, without a word. My quickness would have to be myself break into a sound that, by the open door, rang through
remarkable, however, and the question of a conveyance was the the long passage and the empty house. She looked at me as if
great one to settle. Tormented, in the hall, with difficulties and she heard me, but I had recovered myself and cleared the air.

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There was nothing in the room the next minute but the
sunshine and a sense that I must stay.

Chapter XVI
I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be
marked by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having to take
into account that they were dumb about my absence. Instead of gaily
denouncing and caressing me, they made no allusion to my having
failed them, and I was left, for the time, on perceiving that she too
said nothing, to study Mrs. Grose’s odd face. I did this to such
purpose that I made sure they had in some way bribed her to silence;
a silence that, however, I would engage to break down on the first
private opportunity. This opportunity came before tea: I secured five
minutes with her in the housekeeper’s room, where, in the twilight,
amid a smell of lately baked bread, but with the place all swept and
garnished, I found her sitting in pained placidity before the fire. So I
see her still, so I see her best: facing the flame from her straight chair
in the dusky, shining room, a large clean image of the ‘put away’ – of
drawers closed and locked and rest without a remedy.
‘Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them –
so long as they were there – of course I promised. But what had
happened to you?’
‘I only went with you for the walk,’ I said. ‘I had then to come
back to meet a friend.’
She showed her surprise. ‘A friend – YOU?’
‘Oh, yes, I have a couple!’ I laughed. ‘But did the children give
you a reason?’
‘For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they said you would
like it better. Do you like it better?’

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My face had made her rueful. ‘No, I like it worse!’ But after an shall have it here from me on the spot (and before the boy
instant I added: ‘Did they say why I should like it better?’ himself, if necessary) that if I’m to be reproached with having
‘No; Master Miles only said, ‘We must do nothing but what done nothing again about more school – ’
she likes!’’ ‘Yes, miss – ’ my companion pressed me.
‘I wish indeed he would. And what did Flora say?’ ‘Well, there’s that awful reason.’
‘Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, ‘Oh, of course, of course!’ There were now clearly so many of these for my poor
– and I said the same.’ colleague that she was excusable for being vague. ‘But – a –
I thought a moment. ‘You were too sweet, too – I can hear which?’
you all. But nonetheless, between Miles and me, it’s now all out.’ ‘Why, the letter from his old place.’
‘All out?’ My companion stared. ‘But what, miss?’ ‘You’ll show it to the master?’
‘Everything. It doesn’t matter. I’ve made up my mind. I came ‘I ought to have done so on the instant.’
home, my dear,’ I went on, ‘for a talk with Miss Jessel.’ ‘Oh, no!’ said Mrs. Grose with decision.
I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally ‘I’ll put it before him,’ I went on inexorably, ‘that I can’t
well in hand in advance of my sounding that note; so that even undertake to work the question on behalf of a child who has
now, as she bravely blinked under the signal of my word, I could been expelled – ’
keep her comparatively firm. ‘A talk! Do you mean she spoke?’ ‘For we’ve never in the least known what!’ Mrs. Grose
‘It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the declared.
schoolroom.’ ‘For wickedness. For what else – when he’s so clever and
‘And what did she say?’ I can hear the good woman still, and beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is
the candor of her stupefaction. he ill-natured? He’s exquisite – so it can be only THAT; and that
‘That she suffers the torments – !’ would open up the whole thing. After all,’ I said, ‘it’s their
It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my uncle’s fault. If he left here such people – !’
picture, gape. ‘Do you mean,’ she faltered, ‘ – of the lost?’ ‘He didn’t really in the least know them. The fault’s mine.’ She
‘Of the lost. Of the damned. And that’s why, to share them-’ I had turned quite pale.
faltered myself with the horror of it. ‘Well, you shan’t suffer,’ I answered.
But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. ‘To ‘The children shan’t!’ she emphatically returned.
share them – ?’ I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. ‘Then what am I
‘She wants Flora.’ Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly to tell him?’
have fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her ‘You needn’t tell him anything. I’ll tell him.’
there, to show I was. ‘As I’ve told you, however, it doesn’t matter.’ I measured this. ‘Do you mean you’ll write – ?’ Remembering
‘Because you’ve made up your mind? But to what?’ she couldn’t, I caught myself up. ‘How do you communicate?’
‘To everything.’ ‘I tell the bailiff. HE writes.’
‘And what do you call ‘everything’?’ ‘And should you like him to write our story?’
‘Why, sending for their uncle.’ My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully
‘Oh, miss, in pity do,’ my friend broke out. ‘ah, but I will, I intended, and it made her, after a moment, inconsequently
WILL! I see it’s the only way. What’s ‘out,’ as I told you, with break down. The tears were again in her eyes. ‘Ah, miss, YOU
Miles is that if he thinks I’m afraid to – and has ideas of what he write!’
gains by that – he shall see he’s mistaken. Yes, yes; his uncle ‘Well – tonight,’ I at last answered; and on this we separated.

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I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The
weather had changed back, a great wind was abroad, and
beneath the lamp, in my room, with Flora at peace beside me, I
sat for a long time before a blank sheet of paper and listened to
the lash of the rain and the batter of the gusts. Finally I went
out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage and listened a minute
at Miles’s door. What, under my endless obsession, I had been
impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his not being at rest,
and I presently caught one, but not in the form I had expected.
His voice tinkled out. ‘I say, you there – come in.’ It was a gaiety
in the gloom!
I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide
awake, but very much at his ease. ‘Well, what are YOU up to?’ he
asked with a grace of sociability in which it occurred to me that
Mrs. Grose, had she been present, might have looked in vain for
proof that anything was ‘out.’
I stood over him with my candle. ‘How did you know I was
there?’
‘Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no
noise? You’re like a troop of cavalry!’ he beautifully laughed.
‘Then you weren’t asleep?’
‘Not much! I lie awake and think.’
I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as
he held out his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the
edge of his bed. ‘What is it,’ I asked, ‘that you think of?’

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‘What in the world, my dear, but YOU?’ little thing that ever happened to you at school. Never, little
‘Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn’t insist on Miles – no, never – have you given me an inkling of anything
that! I had so far rather you slept.’ that MAY have happened there. Therefore you can fancy how
‘Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours.’ much I’m in the dark. Until you came out, that way, this
I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. ‘Of what queer morning, you had, since the first hour I saw you, scarce even
business, Miles?’ made a reference to anything in your previous life. You seemed
‘Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!’ so perfectly to accept the present.’ It was extraordinary how my
I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my absolute conviction of his secret precocity (or whatever I might
glimmering taper there was light enough to show how he smiled call the poison of an influence that I dared but half to phrase)
up at me from his pillow. ‘What do you mean by all the rest?’ made him, in spite of the faint breath of his inward trouble,
‘Oh, you know, you know!’ appear as accessible as an older person – imposed him almost as
I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his an intellectual equal. ‘I thought you wanted to go on as you are.’
hand and our eyes continued to meet, that my silence had all It struck me that at this he just faintly colored. He gave, at
the air of admitting his charge and that nothing in the whole any rate, like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of
world of reality was perhaps at that moment so fabulous as our his head. ‘I don’t – I don’t. I want to get away.’
actual relation. ‘Certainly you shall go back to school,’ I said, ‘if ‘You’re tired of Bly?’
it be that that troubles you. But not to the old place – we must ‘Oh, no, I like Bly.’
find another, a better. How could I know it did trouble you, this ‘Well, then – ?’
question, when you never told me so, never spoke of it at all?’ ‘Oh, YOU know what a boy wants!’
His clear, listening face, framed in its smooth whiteness, made I felt that I didn’t know so well as Miles, and I took temporary
him for the minute as appealing as some wistful patient in a refuge. ‘You want to go to your uncle?’
children’s hospital; and I would have given, as the resemblance Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a
came to me, all I possessed on earth really to be the nurse or the movement on the pillow. ‘Ah, you can’t get off with that!’
sister of charity who might have helped to cure him. Well, even I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed
as it was, I perhaps might help! ‘Do you know you’ve never said color. ‘My dear, I don’t want to get off!’
a word to me about your school – I mean the old one; never ‘You can’t, even if you do. You can’t, you can’t!’ – he lay
mentioned it in any way?’ beautifully staring. ‘My uncle must come down, and you must
He seemed to wonder; he smiled with the same loveliness. completely settle things.’
But he clearly gained time; he waited, he called for guidance. ‘If we do,’ I returned with some spirit, ‘you may be sure it will
‘Haven’t I?’ It wasn’t for ME to help him – it was for the thing I be to take you quite away.’
had met! ‘Well, don’t you understand that that’s exactly what I’m
Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I got working for? You’ll have to tell him – about the way you’ve let it
this from him, set my heart aching with such a pang as it had all drop: you’ll have to tell him a tremendous lot!’
never yet known; so unutterably touching was it to see his little The exultation with which he uttered this helped me
brain puzzled and his little resources taxed to play, under the somehow, for the instant, to meet him rather more. ‘And how
spell laid on him, a part of innocence and consistency. ‘No, much will YOU, Miles, have to tell him? There are things he’ll
never – from the hour you came back. You’ve never mentioned ask you!’
to me one of your masters, one of your comrades, nor the least He turned it over. ‘Very likely. But what things?’

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‘The things you’ve never told me. To make up his mind what beside the bed and seize once more the chance of possessing
to do with you. He can’t send you back – ’ him. ‘Dear little Miles, dear little Miles, if you KNEW how I
‘Oh, I don’t want to go back!’ he broke in. ‘I want a new field.’ want to help you! It’s only that, it’s nothing but that, and I’d
He said it with admirable serenity, with positive rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong – I’d rather die
unimpeachable gaiety; and doubtless it was that very note that than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles’ – oh, I brought it out
most evoked for me the poignancy, the unnatural childish now even if I SHOULD go too far – ’I just want you to help me
tragedy, of his probable reappearance at the end of three to save you!’ But I knew in a moment after this that I had gone
months with all this bravado and still more dishonor. It too far. The answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but it came
overwhelmed me now that I should never be able to bear that, in the form of an extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen
and it made me let myself go. I threw myself upon him and in air, and a shake of the room as great as if, in the wild wind, the
the tenderness of my pity I embraced him. ‘Dear little Miles, casement had crashed in. The boy gave a loud, high shriek,
dear little Miles – !’ which, lost in the rest of the shock of sound, might have
My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to him, a note either
taking it with indulgent good humor. ‘Well, old lady?’ of jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my feet again and was
‘Is there nothing – nothing at all that you want to tell me?’ conscious of darkness. So for a moment we remained, while I
He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and stared about me and saw that the drawn curtains were unstirred
holding up his hand to look at as one had seen sick children and the window tight. ‘Why, the candle’s out!’ I then cried.
look. ‘I’ve told you – I told you this morning.’ ‘It was I who blew it, dear!’ said Miles.
Oh, I was sorry for him! ‘That you just want me not to worry
you?’
He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my
understanding him; then ever so gently, ‘To let me alone,’ he
replied.
There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that
made me release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside
him. God knows I never wished to harass him, but I felt that
merely, at this, to turn my back on him was to abandon or, to
put it more truly, to lose him. ‘I’ve just begun a letter to your
uncle,’ I said.
‘Well, then, finish it!’
I waited a minute. ‘What happened before?’
He gazed up at me again. ‘Before what?’
‘Before you came back. And before you went away.’
For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my
eyes. ‘What happened?’
It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me
that I caught for the very first time a small faint quaver of
consenting consciousness – it made me drop on my knees

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 Chapter XVIII
The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to
me quietly: ‘Have you written, miss?’
‘Yes – I’ve written.’ But I didn’t add – for the hour – that my
letter, sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would be
time enough to send it before the messenger should go to the
village. Meanwhile there had been, on the part of my pupils, no
more brilliant, more exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they
had both had at heart to gloss over any recent little friction. They
performed the dizziest feats of arithmetic, soaring quite out of
MY feeble range, and perpetrated, in higher spirits than ever,
geographical and historical jokes. It was conspicuous of course in
Miles in particular that he appeared to wish to show how easily
he could let me down. This child, to my memory, really lives in a
setting of beauty and misery that no words can translate; there
was a distinction all his own in every impulse he revealed; never
was a small natural creature, to the uninitiated eye all frankness
and freedom, a more ingenious, a more extraordinary little
gentleman. I had perpetually to guard against the wonder of
contemplation into which my initiated view betrayed me; to
check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged sigh in which I
constantly both attacked and renounced the enigma of what such
a little gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty. Say
that, by the dark prodigy I knew, the imagination of all evil HAD
been opened up to him: all the justice within me ached for the
proof that it could ever have flowered into an act.

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He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as look for her without an air of alarm. This we promptly arranged
when, after our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round between us; but when, ten minutes later and in pursuance of
to me and asked if I shouldn’t like him, for half an hour, to play to our arrangement, we met in the hall, it was only to report on
me. David playing to Saul could never have shown a finer sense of either side that after guarded inquiries we had altogether failed
the occasion. It was literally a charming exhibition of tact, of to trace her. For a minute there, apart from observation, we
magnanimity, and quite tantamount to his saying outright: ‘The exchanged mute alarms, and I could feel with what high interest
true knights we love to read about never push an advantage too my friend returned me all those I had from the first given her.
far. I know what you mean now: you mean that – to be let alone ‘She’ll be above,’ she presently said – ’in one of the rooms you
yourself and not followed up – you’ll cease to worry and spy upon haven’t searched.’
me, won’t keep me so close to you, will let me go and come. Well, I ‘No; she’s at a distance.’ I had made up my mind. ‘She has
‘come,’ you see – but I don’t go! There’ll be plenty of time for that. gone out.’
I do really delight in your society, and I only want to show you Mrs. Grose stared. ‘Without a hat?’
that I contended for a principle.’ It may be imagined whether I I naturally also looked volumes. ‘Isn’t that woman always
resisted this appeal or failed to accompany him again, hand in without one?’
hand, to the schoolroom. He sat down at the old piano and played ‘She’s with HER?’
as he had never played; and if there are those who think he had ‘She’s with HER!’ I declared. ‘We must find them.’
better have been kicking a football I can only say that I wholly My hand was on my friend’s arm, but she failed for the
agree with them. For at the end of a time that under his influence moment, confronted with such an account of the matter, to
I had quite ceased to measure, I started up with a strange sense of respond to my pressure. She communed, on the contrary, on the
having literally slept at my post. It was after luncheon, and by the spot, with her uneasiness. ‘And where’s Master Miles?’
schoolroom fire, and yet I hadn’t really, in the least, slept: I had ‘Oh, HE’S with Quint. They’re in the schoolroom.’
only done something much worse – I had forgotten. Where, all ‘Lord, miss!’ My view, I was myself aware – and therefore I
this time, was Flora? When I put the question to Miles, he played suppose my tone – had never yet reached so calm an assurance.
on a minute before answering and then could only say: ‘Why, my ‘The trick’s played,’ I went on; ‘they’ve successfully worked
dear, how do I know?’ – breaking moreover into a happy laugh their plan. He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet
which, immediately after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment, he while she went off.’
prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song. ‘‘Divine’?’ Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed.
I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; then, ‘Infernal, then!’ I almost cheerfully rejoined. ‘He has provided
before going downstairs, I looked into several others. As she for himself as well. But come!’
was nowhere about she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. ‘You leave
in the comfort of that theory, I accordingly proceeded in quest him – ?’
of. I found her where I had found her the evening before, but ‘So long with Quint? Yes – I don’t mind that now.’
she met my quick challenge with blank, scared ignorance. She She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of
had only supposed that, after the repast, I had carried off both my hand, and in this manner she could at present still stay me.
the children; as to which she was quite in her right, for it was But after gasping an instant at my sudden resignation, ‘Because
the very first time I had allowed the little girl out of my sight of your letter?’ she eagerly brought out.
without some special provision. Of course now indeed she I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth,
might be with the maids, so that the immediate thing was to held it up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the

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great hall table. ‘Luke will take it,’ I said as I came back. I
reached the house door and opened it; I was already on the
steps.
My companion still demurred: the storm of the night and the
early morning had dropped, but the afternoon was damp and
gray. I came down to the drive while she stood in the doorway.
‘You go with nothing on?’
‘What do I care when the child has nothing? I can’t wait to
dress,’ I cried, ‘and if you must do so, I leave you. Try

Chapter XIX
meanwhile, yourself, upstairs.’
‘With THEM?’ Oh, on this, the poor woman promptly joined
me!

We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I

daresay rightly called, though I reflect that it may in fact have
been a sheet of water less remarkable than it appeared to my
untraveled eyes. My acquaintance with sheets of water was
small, and the pool of Bly, at all events on the few occasions of
my consenting, under the protection of my pupils, to affront its
surface in the old flat-bottomed boat moored there for our use,
had impressed me both with its extent and its agitation. The
usual place of embarkation was half a mile from the house, but I
had an intimate conviction that, wherever Flora might be, she
was not near home. She had not given me the slip for any small
adventure, and, since the day of the very great one that I had
shared with her by the pond, I had been aware, in our walks, of
the quarter to which she most inclined. This was why I had now
given to Mrs. Grose’s steps so marked a direction – a direction
that made her, when she perceived it, oppose a resistance that
showed me she was freshly mystified. ‘You’re going to the water,
Miss? – you think she’s IN – ?’
‘She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very
great. But what I judge most likely is that she’s on the spot from
which, the other day, we saw together what I told you.’
‘When she pretended not to see – ?’
‘With that astounding self-possession? I’ve always been sure
she wanted to go back alone. And now her brother has managed
it for her.’

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Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. ‘You suppose ‘That’s exactly what we must learn.’ And I started to walk
they really TALK of them?’ further.
‘I could meet this with a confidence! They say things that, if ‘By going all the way round?’
we heard them, would simply appall us.’ ‘Certainly, far as it is. It will take us but ten minutes, but it’s
‘And if she IS there – ’ far enough to have made the child prefer not to walk. She went
‘Yes?’ straight over.’
‘Then Miss Jessel is?’ ‘Laws!’ cried my friend again; the chain of my logic was ever
‘Beyond a doubt. You shall see.’ too much for her. It dragged her at my heels even now, and
‘Oh, thank you!’ my friend cried, planted so firm that, taking when we had got halfway round – a devious, tiresome process,
it in, I went straight on without her. By the time I reached the on ground much broken and by a path choked with overgrowth
pool, however, she was close behind me, and I knew that, – I paused to give her breath. I sustained her with a grateful
whatever, to her apprehension, might befall me, the exposure of arm, assuring her that she might hugely help me; and this
my society struck her as her least danger. She exhaled a moan of started us afresh, so that in the course of but few minutes more
relief as we at last came in sight of the greater part of the water we reached a point from which we found the boat to be where I
without a sight of the child. There was no trace of Flora on that had supposed it. It had been intentionally left as much as
nearer side of the bank where my observation of her had been possible out of sight and was tied to one of the stakes of a fence
most startling, and none on the opposite edge, where, save for a that came, just there, down to the brink and that had been an
margin of some twenty yards, a thick copse came down to the assistance to disembarking. I recognized, as I looked at the pair
water. The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so scant of short, thick oars, quite safely drawn up, the prodigious
compared to its length that, with its ends out of view, it might character of the feat for a little girl; but I had lived, by this time,
have been taken for a scant river. We looked at the empty too long among wonders and had panted to too many livelier
expanse, and then I felt the suggestion of my friend’s eyes. I measures. There was a gate in the fence, through which we
knew what she meant and I replied with a negative headshake. passed, and that brought us, after a trifling interval, more into
‘No, no; wait! She has taken the boat.’ the open. Then, ‘There she is!’ we both exclaimed at once.
My companion stared at the vacant mooring place and then Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled
again across the lake. ‘Then where is it?’ as if her performance was now complete. The next thing she did,
‘Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to however, was to stoop straight down and pluck – quite as if it
go over, and then has managed to hide it.’ were all she was there for – a big, ugly spray of withered fern. I
‘All alone – that child?’ instantly became sure she had just come out of the copse. She
‘She’s not alone, and at such times she’s not a child: she’s an waited for us, not herself taking a step, and I was conscious of
old, old woman.’ I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose the rare solemnity with which we presently approached her. She
took again, into the queer element I offered her, one of her smiled and smiled, and we met; but it was all done in a silence
plunges of submission; then I pointed out that the boat might by this time flagrantly ominous. Mrs. Grose was the first to
perfectly be in a small refuge formed by one of the recesses of the break the spell: she threw herself on her knees and, drawing the
pool, an indentation masked, for the hither side, by a projection child to her breast, clasped in a long embrace the little tender,
of the bank and by a clump of trees growing close to the water. yielding body. While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only
‘But if the boat’s there, where on earth’s SHE?’ my colleague watch it – which I did the more intently when I saw Flora’s face
anxiously asked. peep at me over our companion’s shoulder. It was serious now –

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the 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 child’s 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. ‘I’ll be hanged,’ it said, ‘if I’ll

Chapter XX
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. Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon
She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to take this us. Much as I had made of the fact that this name had never
as an answer quite sufficient. ‘And where’s Miles?’ she went on. once, between us, been sounded, the quick, smitten glare with
There was something in the small valor of it that quite which the child’s face now received it fairly likened my breach of
finished me: these three words from her were, in a flash like the the silence to the smash of a pane of glass. It added to the
glitter of a drawn blade, the jostle of the cup that my hand, for interposing cry, as if to stay the blow, that Mrs. Grose, at the
weeks and weeks, had held high and full to the brim that now, same instant, uttered over my violence – the shriek of a creature
even before speaking, I felt overflow in a deluge. ‘I’ll tell you if scared, or rather wounded, which, in turn, within a few seconds,
you’ll tell ME – ’ I heard myself say, then heard the tremor in was completed by a gasp of my own. I seized my colleague’s arm.
which it broke. ‘She’s there, she’s there!’
‘Well, what?’ Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as
Mrs. Grose’s suspense blazed at me, but it was too late now, she had stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the
and I brought the thing out handsomely. ‘Where, my pet, is first feeling now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having
Miss Jessel?’ 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 her – with the sense
that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch and
understand it – an 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. Grose’s dazed blink
across to where I pointed struck me as a sovereign sign that she

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too at last saw, just as it carried my own eyes precipitately to the presenting her to it, to insist with my pointing hand. ‘You don’t
child. The revelation then of the manner in which Flora was see her exactly as WE see? – you mean to say you don’t now –
affected startled me, in truth, far more than it would have done NOW? She’s as big as a blazing fire! Only look, dearest woman,
to find her also merely agitated, for direct dismay was of course LOOK – !’ She looked, even as I did, and gave me, with her deep
not what I had expected. Prepared and on her guard as our groan of negation, repulsion, compassion – the mixture with
pursuit had actually made her, she would repress every betrayal; her pity of her relief at her exemption – a sense, touching to me
and I was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my first glimpse of even then, that she would have backed me up if she could. I
the particular one for which I had not allowed. To see her, might well have needed that, for with this hard blow of the
without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to proof that her eyes were hopelessly sealed I felt my own
glance in the direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, situation horribly crumble, I felt – I saw – my livid predecessor
instead of that, turn at ME an expression of hard, still gravity, press, from her position, on my defeat, and I was conscious,
an expression absolutely new and unprecedented and that more than all, of what I should have from this instant to deal
appeared to read and accuse and judge me – this was a stroke with in the astounding little attitude of Flora. Into this attitude
that somehow converted the little girl herself into the very Mrs. Grose immediately and violently entered, breaking, even
presence that could make me quail. I quailed even though my while there pierced through my sense of ruin a prodigious
certitude that she thoroughly saw was never greater than at private triumph, into breathless reassurance.
that instant, and in the immediate need to defend myself I ‘She isn’t there, little lady, and nobody’s there – and you
called it passionately to witness. ‘She’s there, you little unhappy never see nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel – when
thing – there, there, THERE, and you see her as well as you see poor Miss Jessel’s dead and buried? WE know, don’t we, love?’ –
me!’ I had said shortly before to Mrs. Grose that she was not at and she appealed, blundering in, to the child. ‘It’s all a mere
these times a child, but an old, old woman, and that description mistake and a worry and a joke – and we’ll go home as fast as we
of her could not have been more strikingly confirmed than in can!’
the way in which, for all answer to this, she simply showed me, Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange, quick
without a concession, an admission, of her eyes, a countenance primness of propriety, and they were again, with Mrs. Grose on
of deeper and deeper, of indeed suddenly quite fixed, her feet, united, as it were, in pained opposition to me. Flora
reprobation. I was by this time – if I can put the whole thing at continued to fix me with her small mask of reprobation, and
all together – more appalled at what I may properly call her even at that minute I prayed God to forgive me for seeming to
manner than at anything else, though it was simultaneously see that, as she stood there holding tight to our friend’s dress,
with this that I became aware of having Mrs. Grose also, and her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly failed, had quite
very formidably, to reckon with. My elder companion, the next vanished. I’ve said it already – she was literally, she was
moment, at any rate, blotted out everything but her own hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. ‘I
flushed face and her loud, shocked protest, a burst of high don’t know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never
disapproval. ‘What a dreadful turn, to be sure, miss! Where on HAVE. I think you’re cruel. I don’t like you!’ Then, after this
earth do you see anything?’ deliverance, which might have been that of a vulgarly pert little
I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose more closely and
spoke the hideous plain presence stood undimmed and buried in her skirts the dreadful little face. In this position she
undaunted. It had already lasted a minute, and it lasted while I produced an almost furious wail. ‘Take me away, take me away –
continued, seizing my colleague, quite thrusting her at it and oh, take me away from HER!’

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‘From ME?’ I panted. ambiguous compensation, I saw a great deal of Miles. I saw – I
‘From you – from you!’ she cried. can use no other phrase – so much of him that it was as if it
Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed, while I had were more than it had ever been. No evening I had passed at Bly
nothing to do but communicate again with the figure that, on had the portentous quality of this one; in spite of which – and
the opposite bank, without a movement, as rigidly still as if in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had
catching, beyond the interval, our voices, was as vividly there opened beneath my feet – there was literally, in the ebbing
for my disaster as it was not there for my service. The wretched actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness. On reaching the house
child had spoken exactly as if she had got from some outside I had never so much as looked for the boy; I had simply gone
source each of her stabbing little words, and I could therefore, straight to my room to change what I was wearing and to take
in the full despair of all I had to accept, but sadly shake my head in, at a glance, much material testimony to Flora’s rupture. Her
at her. ‘If I had ever doubted, all my doubt would at present little belongings had all been removed. When later, by the
have gone. I’ve been living with the miserable truth, and now it schoolroom fire, I was served with tea by the usual maid, I
has only too much closed round me. Of course I’ve lost you: I’ve indulged, on the article of my other pupil, in no inquiry
interfered, and you’ve seen – under HER dictation’ – with which whatever. He had his freedom now – he might have it to the
I faced, over the pool again, our infernal witness – ’the easy and end! Well, he did have it; and it consisted – in part at least – of
perfect way to meet it. I’ve done my best, but I’ve lost you. his coming in at about eight o’clock and sitting down with me in
Goodbye.’ For Mrs. Grose I had an imperative, an almost frantic silence. On the removal of the tea things I had blown out the
‘Go, go!’ before which, in infinite distress, but mutely possessed candles and drawn my chair closer: I was conscious of a mortal
of the little girl and clearly convinced, in spite of her blindness, coldness and felt as if I should never again be warm. So, when
that something awful had occurred and some collapse engulfed he appeared, I was sitting in the glow with my thoughts. He
us, she retreated, by the way we had come, as fast as she could paused a moment by the door as if to look at me; then – as if to
move. share them – came to the other side of the hearth and sank into
Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no a chair. We sat there in absolute stillness; yet he wanted, I felt,
subsequent memory. I only knew that at the end of, I suppose, a to be with me.
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

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 Chapter 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. ‘Ah, miss, it isn’t a
matter on which I can push her! Yet it isn’t 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
indeed – SHE!’ Ah, she’s ‘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! She’ll never speak to me again.’

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Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held Mrs. Grose briefly terribly near it. Yet that won’t do. It’s YOU who must go. You
silent; then she granted my point with a frankness which, I must take Flora.’
made sure, had more behind it. ‘I think indeed, miss, she never My visitor, at this, did speculate. ‘But where in the world – ?’
will. She do have a grand manner about it!’ ‘Away from here. Away from THEM. Away, even most of all,
‘And that manner’ – I summed it up – ’is practically what’s the now, from me. Straight to her uncle.’
matter with her now!’ ‘Only to tell on you – ?’
Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitor’s face, and not a ‘No, not ‘only’! To leave me, in addition, with my remedy.’
little else besides! ‘She asks me every three minutes if I think She was still vague. ‘And what IS your remedy?’
you’re coming in.’ ‘Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miles’s.’
‘I see – I see.’ I, too, on my side, had so much more than She looked at me hard. ‘Do you think he – ?’
worked it out. ‘Has she said to you since yesterday – except to ‘Won’t, if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still
repudiate her familiarity with anything so dreadful – a single to think it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his sister as
other word about Miss Jessel?’ soon as possible and leave me with him alone.’ I was amazed,
‘Not one, miss. And of course you know,’ my friend added, ‘I myself, at the spirit I had still in reserve, and therefore perhaps
took it from her, by the lake, that, just then and there at least, a trifle the more disconcerted at the way in which, in spite of
there WAS nobody.’ this fine example of it, she hesitated. ‘There’s one thing, of
‘Rather! and, naturally, you take it from her still.’ course,’ I went on: ‘they mustn’t, before she goes, see each other
‘I don’t contradict her. What else can I do?’ for three seconds.’ Then it came over me that, in spite of Flora’s
‘Nothing in the world! You’ve the cleverest little person to presumable sequestration from the instant of her return from
deal with. They’ve made them – their two friends, I mean – still the pool, it might already be too late. ‘Do you mean,’ I anxiously
cleverer even than nature did; for it was wondrous material to asked, ‘that they HAVE met?’
play on! Flora has now her grievance, and she’ll work it to the At this she quite flushed. ‘Ah, miss, I’m not such a fool as
end.’ that! If I’ve been obliged to leave her three or four times, it has
‘Yes, miss; but to WHAT end?’ been each time with one of the maids, and at present, though
‘Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. She’ll make me she’s alone, she’s locked in safe. And yet – and yet!’ There were
out to him the lowest creature – !’ too many things.
I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Grose’s face; she ‘And yet what?’
looked for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. ‘And ‘Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman?’
him who thinks so well of you!’ ‘I’m not sure of anything but YOU. But I have, since last
‘He has an odd way – it comes over me now,’ I laughed,’ – of evening, a new hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I
proving it! But that doesn’t matter. What Flora wants, of do believe that – poor little exquisite wretch! – he wants to
course, is to get rid of me.’ speak. Last evening, in the firelight and the silence, he sat with
My companion bravely concurred. ‘Never again to so much as me for two hours as if it were just coming.’
look at you.’ Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the gray,
‘So that what you’ve come to me now for,’ I asked, ‘is to speed gathering day. ‘And did it come?’
me on my way?’ Before she had time to reply, however, I had her ‘No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didn’t, and it was
in check. ‘I’ve a better idea – the result of my reflections. My without a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion to
going WOULD seem the right thing, and on Sunday I was his sister’s condition and absence that we at last kissed for good

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night. All the same,’ I continued, ‘I can’t, if her uncle sees her, ‘She’s so horrible?’
consent to his seeing her brother without my having given the I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. ‘Really
boy – and most of all because things have got so bad – a little shocking.’
more time.’ ‘And about me?’
My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I ‘About you, miss – since you must have it. It’s beyond
could quite understand. ‘What do you mean by more time?’ everything, for a young lady; and I can’t think wherever she
‘Well, a day or two – really to bring it out. He’ll then be on must have picked up – ’
MY side – of which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I ‘The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then!’ I
shall only fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by broke in with a laugh that was doubtless significant enough.
doing, on your arrival in town, whatever you may have found It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. ‘Well, perhaps
possible.’ So I put it before her, but she continued for a little so I ought to also – since I’ve heard some of it before! Yet I can’t
inscrutably embarrassed that I came again to her aid. ‘Unless, bear it,’ the poor woman went on while, with the same
indeed,’ I wound up, ‘you really want NOT to go.’ movement, she glanced, on my dressing table, at the face of my
I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; she put out her watch. ‘But I must go back.’
hand to me as a pledge. ‘I’ll go – I’ll go. I’ll go this morning.’ I kept her, however. ‘Ah, if you can’t bear it – !’
I wanted to be very just. ‘If you SHOULD wish still to wait, I ‘How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just FOR that: to
would engage she shouldn’t see me.’ get her away. Far from this,’ she pursued, ‘far from THEM-’
‘No, no: it’s the place itself. She must leave it.’ She held me a ‘She may be different? She may be free?’ I seized her almost
moment with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. ‘Your idea’s with joy. ‘Then, in spite of yesterday, you BELIEVE – ’
the right one. I myself, miss – ’ ‘In such doings?’ Her simple description of them required, in
‘Well?’ the light of her expression, to be carried no further, and she
‘I can’t stay.’ gave me the whole thing as she had never done. ‘I believe.’
The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder: if I might
‘You mean that, since yesterday, you HAVE seen – ?’ continue sure of that I should care but little what else happened.
She shook her head with dignity. ‘I’ve HEARD – !’ My support in the presence of disaster would be the same as it had
‘Heard?’ been in my early need of confidence, and if my friend would answer
‘From that child – horrors! There!’ she sighed with tragic for my honesty, I would answer for all the rest. On the point of
relief. ‘On my honor, miss, she says things – !’ But at this taking leave of her, nonetheless, I was to some extent embarrassed.
evocation she broke down; she dropped, with a sudden sob, ‘There’s one thing, of course – it occurs to me – to remember. My
upon my sofa and, as I had seen her do before, gave way to all letter, giving the alarm, will have reached town before you.’
the grief of it. I now perceived still more how she had been beating about
It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let myself the bush and how weary at last it had made her. ‘Your letter
go. ‘Oh, thank God!’ won’t have got there. Your letter never went.’
She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a groan. ‘What then became of it?’
‘‘Thank God’?’ ‘Goodness knows! Master Miles – ’
‘It so justifies me!’ ‘Do you mean HE took it?’ I gasped.
‘It does that, miss!’ She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. ‘I mean that I
I couldn’t have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. saw yesterday, when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasn’t

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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 don’t you see anything else?’
I faced her a moment with a sad smile. ‘It strikes me that by

Chapter XXII
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!’ Yet it was when she had got off – and I missed her on the spot –
I turned it over – I tried to be more judicial. ‘Well – perhaps.’ that the great pinch really came. If I had counted on what it would
She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. ‘He stole give me to find myself alone with Miles, I speedily perceived, at
LETTERS!’ least, that it would give me a measure. No hour of my stay in fact
She couldn’t know my reasons for a calmness after all pretty was so assailed with apprehensions as that of my coming down to
shallow; so I showed them off as I might. ‘I hope then it was to learn that the carriage containing Mrs. Grose and my younger
more purpose than in this case! The note, at any rate, that I put pupil had already rolled out of the gates. Now I WAS, I said to
on the table yesterday,’ I pursued, ‘will have given him so scant myself, face to face with the elements, and for much of the rest of
an advantage – for it contained only the bare demand for an the day, while I fought my weakness, I could consider that I had
interview – that he is already much ashamed of having gone so been supremely rash. It was a tighter place still than I had yet
far for so little, and that what he had on his mind last evening turned round in; all the more that, for the first time, I could see in
was precisely the need of confession.’ I seemed to myself, for the the aspect of others a confused reflection of the crisis. What had
instant, to have mastered it, to see it all. ‘Leave us, leave us’ – I happened naturally caused them all to stare; there was too little of
was already, at the door, hurrying her off. ‘I’ll get it out of him. the explained, throw out whatever we might, in the suddenness of
He’ll meet me – he’ll confess. If he confesses, he’s saved. And if my colleague’s act. The maids and the men looked blank; the effect
he’s saved – ’ of which on my nerves was an aggravation until I saw the necessity
‘Then YOU are?’ The dear woman kissed me on this, and I of making it a positive aid. It was precisely, in short, by just
took her farewell. ‘I’ll save you without him!’ she cried as she clutching the helm that I avoided total wreck; and I dare say that,
went. 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.

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The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, till from Mrs. Grose, that first scared Sunday, my flash of
dinner, little Miles himself. My perambulations had given me, something it would scarce have done to call light. Here at
meanwhile, no glimpse of him, but they had tended to make present I felt afresh – for I had felt it again and again – how my
more public the change taking place in our relation as a equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to
consequence of his having at the piano, the day before, kept me, shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to
in Flora’s interest, so beguiled and befooled. The stamp of deal with was, revoltingly, against nature. I could only get on at
publicity had of course been fully given by her confinement and all by taking ‘nature’ into my confidence and my account, by
departure, and the change itself was now ushered in by our treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual,
nonobservance of the regular custom of the schoolroom. He of course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair
had already disappeared when, on my way down, I pushed open front, only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue.
his door, and I learned below that he had breakfasted – in the No attempt, nonetheless, could well require more tact than just
presence of a couple of the maids – with Mrs. Grose and his this attempt to supply, one’s self, ALL the nature. How could I
sister. He had then gone out, as he said, for a stroll; than which put even a little of that article into a suppression of reference to
nothing, I reflected, could better have expressed his frank view what had occurred? How, on the other hand, could I make
of the abrupt transformation of my office. What he would not reference without a new plunge into the hideous obscure? Well,
permit this office to consist of was yet to be settled: there was a a sort of answer, after a time, had come to me, and it was so far
queer relief, at all events – I mean for myself in especial – in the confirmed as that I was met, incontestably, by the quickened
renouncement of one pretension. If so much had sprung to the vision of what was rare in my little companion. It was indeed as
surface, I scarce put it too strongly in saying that what had if he had found even now – as he had so often found at lessons –
perhaps sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging the still some other delicate way to ease me off. Wasn’t there light
fiction that I had anything more to teach him. It sufficiently in the fact which, as we shared our solitude, broke out with a
stuck out that, by tacit little tricks in which even more than specious glitter it had never yet quite worn? – the fact that
myself he carried out the care for my dignity, I had had to (opportunity aiding, precious opportunity which had now
appeal to him to let me off straining to meet him on the ground come) it would be preposterous, with a child so endowed, to
of his true capacity. He had at any rate his freedom now; I was forego the help one might wrest from absolute intelligence?
never to touch it again; as I had amply shown, moreover, when, What had his intelligence been given him for but to save him?
on his joining me in the schoolroom the previous night, I had Mightn’t one, to reach his mind, risk the stretch of an angular
uttered, on the subject of the interval just concluded, neither arm over his character? It was as if, when we were face to face in
challenge nor hint. I had too much, from this moment, my the dining room, he had literally shown me the way. The roast
other ideas. Yet when he at last arrived, the difficulty of mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed with attendance.
applying them, the accumulations of my problem, were brought Miles, before he sat down, stood a moment with his hands in
straight home to me by the beautiful little presence on which his pockets and looked at the joint, on which he seemed on the
what had occurred had as yet, for the eye, dropped neither stain point of passing some humorous judgment. But what he
nor shadow. presently produced was: ‘I say, my dear, is she really very awfully
To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I decreed ill?’
that my meals with the boy should be served, as we called it, ‘Little Flora? Not so bad but that she’ll presently be better.
downstairs; so that I had been awaiting him in the ponderous London will set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her. Come
pomp of the room outside of the window of which I had had here and take your mutton.’

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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 didn’t you get her off before?’
‘Before what?’
‘Before she became too ill to travel.’
I found myself prompt. ‘She’s NOT too ill to travel: she only

Chapter XXIII
might have become so if she had stayed. This was just the
moment to seize. The journey will dissipate the influence’ – oh, I
was grand! – ’and carry it off.’
‘I see, I see’ – Miles, for that matter, was grand, too. He
settled to his repast with the charming little ‘table manner’ ‘Oh, more or less.’ I fancy my smile was pale. ‘Not absolutely. We
that, from the day of his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness shouldn’t like that!’ I went on.
of admonition. Whatever he had been driven from school for, it ‘No – I suppose we shouldn’t. Of course we have the others.’
was not for ugly feeding. He was irreproachable, as always, ‘We have the others – we have indeed the others,’ I concurred.
today; but he was unmistakably more conscious. He was ‘Yet even though we have them,’ he returned, still with his
discernibly trying to take for granted more things than he hands in his pockets and planted there in front of me, ‘they
found, without assistance, quite easy; and he dropped into don’t much count, do they?’
peaceful silence while he felt his situation. Our meal was of the I made the best of it, but I felt wan. ‘It depends on what you
briefest – mine a vain pretense, and I had the things call ‘much’!’
immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again ‘Yes’ – with all accommodation – ’everything depends!’ On
with his hands in his little pockets and his back to me – stood this, however, he faced to the window again and presently
and looked out of the wide window through which, that other reached it with his vague, restless, cogitating step. He remained
day, I had seen what pulled me up. We continued silent while there awhile, with his forehead against the glass, in
the maid was with us – as silent, it whimsically occurred to me, contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the dull things
as some young couple who, on their wedding journey, at the inn, of November. I had always my hypocrisy of ‘work,’ behind
feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned round only which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with it there as I
when the waiter had left us. ‘Well – so we’re alone!’ 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 boy’s embarrassed back – none 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

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and squares of the great window were a kind of image, for him, voice trembled so that I felt it impossible to suppress the shake.
of a kind of failure. I felt that I saw him, at any rate, shut in or ‘Don’t you remember how I told you, when I came and sat on
shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable: I took it in your bed the night of the storm, that there was nothing in the
with a throb of hope. Wasn’t he looking, through the haunted world I wouldn’t do for you?’
pane, for something he couldn’t see? – and wasn’t it the first ‘Yes, yes!’ He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had
time in the whole business that he had known such a lapse? The a tone to master; but he was so much more successful than I
first, the very first: I found it a splendid portent. It made him that, laughing out through his gravity, he could pretend we were
anxious, though he watched himself; he had been anxious all pleasantly jesting. ‘Only that, I think, was to get me to do
day and, even while in his usual sweet little manner he sat at something for YOU!’
table, had needed all his small strange genius to give it a gloss. ‘It was partly to get you to do something,’ I conceded. ‘But,
When he at last turned round to meet me, it was almost as if you know, you didn’t do it.’
this genius had succumbed. ‘Well, I think I’m glad Bly agrees ‘Oh, yes,’ he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, ‘you
with ME!’ wanted me to tell you something.’
‘You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four ‘That’s it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you
hours, a good deal more of it than for some time before. I hope,’ know.’
I went on bravely, ‘that you’ve been enjoying yourself.’ ‘Ah, then, is THAT what you’ve stayed over for?’
‘Oh, yes, I’ve been ever so far; all round about – miles and He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the
miles away. I’ve never been so free.’ finest little quiver of resentful passion; but I can’t begin to
He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to express the effect upon me of an implication of surrender even
keep up with him. ‘Well, do you like it?’ so faint. It was as if what I had yearned for had come at last only
He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words – to astonish me. ‘Well, yes – I may as well make a clean breast of
’Do YOU?’ – more discrimination than I had ever heard two it, it was precisely for that.’
words contain. Before I had time to deal with that, however, he He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of
continued as if with the sense that this was an impertinence to repudiating the assumption on which my action had been
be softened. ‘Nothing could be more charming than the way you founded; but what he finally said was: ‘Do you mean now –
take it, for of course if we’re alone together now it’s you that are here?’
alone most. But I hope,’ he threw in, ‘you don’t particularly ‘There couldn’t be a better place or time.’ He looked round
mind!’ him uneasily, and I had the rare – oh, the queer! – impression of
‘Having to do with you?’ I asked. ‘My dear child, how can I the very first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of
help minding? Though I’ve renounced all claim to your company immediate fear. It was as if he were suddenly afraid of me –
– you’re so beyond me – I at least greatly enjoy it. What else which struck me indeed as perhaps the best thing to make him.
should I stay on for?’ Yet in the very pang of the effort I felt it vain to try sternness,
He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, and I heard myself the next instant so gentle as to be almost
graver now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in grotesque. ‘You want so to go out again?’
it. ‘You stay on just for THAT?’ ‘Awfully!’ He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little
‘Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous bravery of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. He
interest I take in you till something can be done for you that had picked up his hat, which he had brought in, and stood
may be more worth your while. That needn’t surprise you.’ My twirling it in a way that gave me, even as I was just nearly

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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? Wasn’t it base to create for
a being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I suppose I now
read into our situation a clearness it couldn’t 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

Chapter XXIV
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. ‘I’ll tell you everything,’ Miles
said – ’I mean I’ll tell you anything you like. You’ll stay on with
me, and we shall both be all right, and I WILL tell you – I WILL. My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from
But not now.’ something that I can describe only as a fierce split of my
‘Why not now?’ attention – a stroke that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced
My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more me to the mere blind movement of getting hold of him, drawing
at his window in a silence during which, between us, you might him close, and, while I just fell for support against the nearest
have heard a pin drop. Then he was before me again with the air piece of furniture, instinctively keeping him with his back to the
of a person for whom, outside, someone who had frankly to be window. The appearance was full upon us that I had already had
reckoned with was waiting. ‘I have to see Luke.’ to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel
I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, from outside, he
proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to the
up my truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the
‘Well, then, go to Luke, and I’ll wait for what you promise. Only, room his white face of damnation. It represents but grossly
in return for that, satisfy, before you leave me, one very much what took place within me at the sight to say that on the second
smaller request.’ my decision was made; yet I believe that no woman so
He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able overwhelmed ever in so short a time recovered her grasp of the
still a little to bargain. ‘Very much smaller – ?’ ACT. It came to me in the very horror of the immediate
‘Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me’ – oh, my work presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and
preoccupied me, and I was offhand! – ’if, yesterday afternoon, faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration – I can
from the table in the hall, you took, you know, my letter.’ call it by no other name – was 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 soul – held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm’s
length – had 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

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low nor weak, but as if from much further away, that I drank ‘Burned it?’ It was now or never. ‘Is that what you did at
like a waft of fragrance. school?’
‘Yes – I took it.’ Oh, what this brought up! ‘At school?’
At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and ‘Did you take letters? – or other things?’
while I held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden ‘Other things?’ He appeared now to be thinking of something
fever of his little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I far off and that reached him only through the pressure of his
kept my eyes on the thing at the window and saw it move and anxiety. Yet it did reach him. ‘Did I STEAL?’
shift its posture. I have likened it to a sentinel, but its slow I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder
wheel, for a moment, was rather the prowl of a baffled beast. if it were more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or
My present quickened courage, however, was such that, not too to see him take it with allowances that gave the very distance of
much to let it through, I had to shade, as it were, my flame. his fall in the world. ‘Was it for that you mightn’t go back?’
Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at the window, the The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. ‘Did
scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the very you know I mightn’t go back?’
confidence that I might now defy him, as well as the positive ‘I know everything.’
certitude, by this time, of the child’s unconsciousness, that He gave me at this the longest and strangest look.
made me go on. ‘What did you take it for?’ ‘Everything?’
‘To see what you said about me.’ ‘Everything. Therefore DID you – ?’ But I couldn’t say it again.
‘You opened the letter?’ Miles could, very simply. ‘No. I didn’t steal.’
‘I opened it.’ My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my
My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miles’s hands – but it was for pure tenderness – shook him as if to ask
own face, in which the collapse of mockery showed me how him why, if it was all for nothing, he had condemned me to
complete was the ravage of uneasiness. What was prodigious months of torment. ‘What then did you do?’
was that at last, by my success, his sense was sealed and his He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and
communication stopped: he knew that he was in presence, but drew his breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He
knew not of what, and knew still less that I also was and that I might have been standing at the bottom of the sea and raising
did know. And what did this strain of trouble matter when my his eyes to some faint green twilight. ‘Well – I said things.’
eyes went back to the window only to see that the air was clear ‘Only that?’
again and – by my personal triumph – the influence quenched? ‘They thought it was enough!’
There was nothing there. I felt that the cause was mine and that ‘To turn you out for?’
I should surely get ALL. ‘And you found nothing!’ – I let my Never, truly, had a person ‘turned out’ shown so little to
elation out. explain it as this little person! He appeared to weigh my
He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. question, but in a manner quite detached and almost helpless.
‘Nothing.’ ‘Well, I suppose I oughtn’t.’
‘Nothing, nothing!’ I almost shouted in my joy. ‘But to whom did you say them?’
‘Nothing, nothing,’ he sadly repeated. He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped – he had lost
I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. ‘So what have you done it. ‘I don’t know!’
with it?’ He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender,
‘I’ve burned it.’ which was indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I

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ought to have left it there. But I was infatuated – I was blind nonsense!’ But the next after that I must have sounded stern
with victory, though even then the very effect that was to have enough. ‘What WERE these things?’
brought him so much nearer was already that of added My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it
separation. ‘Was it to everyone?’ I asked. made him avert himself again, and that movement made ME,
‘No; it was only to – ’ But he gave a sick little headshake. ‘I with a single bound and an irrepressible cry, spring straight
don’t remember their names.’ upon him. For there again, against the glass, as if to blight his
‘Were they then so many?’ confession and stay his answer, was the hideous author of our
‘No – only a few. Those I liked.’ woe – the white face of damnation. I felt a sick swim at the drop
Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a of my victory and all the return of my battle, so that the
darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out wildness of my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. I
of my very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with a divination,
innocent. It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, and on the perception that even now he only guessed, and that
for if he WERE innocent, what then on earth was I? Paralyzed, the window was still to his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame
while it lasted, by the mere brush of the question, I let him go a up to convert the climax of his dismay into the very proof of his
little, so that, with a deep-drawn sigh, he turned away from me liberation. ‘No more, no more, no more!’ I shrieked, as I tried to
again; which, as he faced toward the clear window, I suffered, press him against me, to my visitant.
feeling that I had nothing now there to keep him from. ‘And did ‘Is she HERE?’ Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes
they repeat what you said?’ I went on after a moment. the direction of my words. Then as his strange ‘she’ staggered
He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard me and, with a gasp, I echoed it, ‘Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!’ he
and again with the air, though now without anger for it, of with a sudden fury gave me back.
being confined against his will. Once more, as he had done I seized, stupefied, his supposition – some sequel to what we
before, he looked up at the dim day as if, of what had hitherto had done to Flora, but this made me only want to show him
sustained him, nothing was left but an unspeakable anxiety. that it was better still than that. ‘It’s not Miss Jessel! But it’s at
‘Oh, yes,’ he nevertheless replied – ’they must have repeated the window – straight before us. It’s THERE – the coward
them. To those THEY liked,’ he added. horror, there for the last time!’
There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I At this, after a second in which his head made the movement
turned it over. ‘And these things came round – ?’ of a baffled dog’s on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake
‘To the masters? Oh, yes!’ he answered very simply. ‘But I for air and light, he was at me in a white rage, bewildered,
didn’t know they’d tell.’ glaring vainly over the place and missing wholly, though it now,
‘The masters? They didn’t – they’ve never told. That’s why I to my sense, filled the room like the taste of poison, the wide,
ask you.’ overwhelming presence. ‘It’s HE?’
He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. ‘Yes, it I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into
was too bad.’ ice to challenge him. ‘Whom do you mean by ‘he’?’
‘Too bad?’ ‘Peter Quint – you devil!’ His face gave again, round the room,
‘What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home.’ its convulsed supplication. ‘WHERE?’
I can’t name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name
to such a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next and his tribute to my devotion. ‘What does he matter now, my
instant I heard myself throw off with homely force: ‘Stuff and own? – what will he EVER matter? I have you,’ I launched at the

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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 him – it 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.

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