“Dear little Miles, dear little
Miles—!”

My face was close to 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 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. He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when, after
our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if
I shouldn’t like him, for half an hour, to play to me. David playing to
Saul could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion. It was
literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, and quite
tantamount to his saying outright: “The true knights we love to read
about never push an advantage too far. I know what you mean now: you
mean that—to be let alone yourself and not followed up—you’ll cease to
worry and spy upon me, won’t keep me so close to you, will let me go
and come. Well, I ‘come,’ you see—but I don’t go! There’ll be plenty of
time for that. I do really delight in your society, and I only want to
show you that I contended for a principle.” It may be imagined whether
I resisted this appeal or failed to accompany him again, hand in hand,
to the schoolroom. He sat down at the old piano and played as he had
never played; and if there are those who think he had better have been
kicking a football I can only say that I wholly agree with them. For at
the end of a time that under his influence I had quite ceased to
measure, I started up with a strange sense of having literally slept at
my post. It was after luncheon, and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I
hadn’t really, in the least, slept: I had only done something much
worse—I had forgotten. Where, all this time, was Flora? When I put the
question to Miles, he played on a minute before answering and then
could only say: “Why, my dear, how do _I_ know?”—breaking moreover into
a happy laugh which, immediately after, as if it were a vocal
accompaniment, he prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song. I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; then, before
going downstairs, I looked into several others. As she was nowhere
about she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, in the comfort of that
theory, I accordingly proceeded in quest of. I found her where I had
found her the evening before, but she met my quick challenge with
blank, scared ignorance. She had only supposed that, after the repast,
I had carried off both the children; as to which she was quite in her
right, for it was the very first time I had allowed the little girl out
of my sight without some special provision. Of course now indeed she
might be with the maids, so that the immediate thing was to look for
her without an air of alarm. This we promptly arranged between us; but
when, ten minutes later and in pursuance of our arrangement, we met in
the hall, it was only to report on either side that after guarded
inquiries we had altogether failed to trace her. For a minute there,
apart from observation, we exchanged mute alarms, and I could feel with
what high interest my friend returned me all those I had from the first
given her. “She’ll be above,” she presently said—“in one of the rooms you haven’t
searched.”

“No; she’s at a distance.” I had made up my mind.