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.

On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned
to my pupils, associating the right remedy for my dismay with
that sense of their charm which I had already found to be a thing
I could positively cultivate and which had never failed me yet.
I had simply, in other words, plunged afresh into Flora's
special society and there become aware--it was almost a luxury!--
that she could put her little conscious hand straight upon