o his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with
indulgent good humor. "Well, old lady?"

"Is there nothing--nothing at all that you want to tell me?"

He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up his
hand to look at as one had seen sick children look. "I've told you--I
told you this morning."

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 beside the bed and seize
once more the chance of possessing him. "Dear little Miles, dear little
Miles, if you KNEW how I want to help you! It's only that, it's nothing
but that, and I'd rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong--I'd
rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles"--oh, I brought it
out now even if I SHOULD go too far--"I just want you to help me to save
you!" But I knew in a moment after this that I had gone too far. The
answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but it came in the form of an
extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and a shake of the
room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in. The
boy gave a loud, high shriek, which, lost in the rest of the shock of
sound, might have seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to 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
tight. "Why, the candle's out!" I then cried.

"It was I who blew it, dear!" said Miles.

XVIII

The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found