at I had been asked for a service admirable and
difficult; and there would be a greatness in letting it be seen--oh, in
the right quarter!--that I could succeed where many another girl might
have failed. It was an immense help to me--I confess I rather applaud
myself as I look back!--that I saw my service so strongly and so simply.
I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the
most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal of whose helplessness had
suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant ache of one's own
committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; we were united in
our danger. They had nothing but me, and I--well, I had THEM. It was
in short a magnificent chance. This chance presented itself to me in an
image richly material. I was a screen--I was to stand before them. The
more I saw, the less they would. I began to watch them in a stifled
suspense, a disguised excitement that might well, had it continued too
long, have turned to something like madness. What saved me, as I now
see, was that it turned to something else altogether. It didn't last as
suspense--it was superseded by horrible proofs. Proofs, I say, yes--from
the moment I really took hold.

This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened to spend in the
grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. We had left Miles indoors,
on the red cushion of a deep window seat; he had wished to finish a
book, and I had been glad to encourage a purpose so laudable in a young
man whose only defect was an occasional excess of the restless. His
sister, on the contrary, had been alert to come out, and I strolled with
her half an hour, seeking the shade, for the sun was still high and the
day exceptionally warm. I was aware afresh, with her, as we went, of
how, like her brother, she contrived--it was the charming thing in both
children--to let me alone without appearing to drop me and to accompany
me without appearing to surround. They were never importunate and yet
never listless. My attention to them all really went to seeing them
amuse themselves immensely without me: this was a spectacle they seemed
actively to prepare and that engaged me as an active admirer. I walked
in a world of their invention--they had no occasion whatever to draw
upon mine; so that my time was taken only with being, for them, some
remarkable person or thing that the game of the moment required and that
was merely, thanks to my superior, my exalted