VI


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; but it took me some time