in the passage and even pushed as far as to where I had last met Quint.
But I never met him there again; and I may as well say at once
that I on no other occasion saw him in the house. I just missed,
on the staircase, on the other hand, a different adventure.
Looking down it from the top I once recognized the presence of a woman
seated on one of the lower steps with her back presented to me,
her body half-bowed and her head, in an attitude of woe, in her hands.
I had been there but an instant, however, when she vanished without
looking round at me. I knew, nonetheless, exactly what dreadful face
she had to show; and I wondered whether, if instead of being above I had
been below, I should have had, for going up, the same nerve I had lately
shown Quint. Well, there continued to be plenty of chance for nerve.
On the eleventh night after my latest encounter with that gentleman--
they were all numbered now--I had an alarm that perilously skirted it
and that indeed, from the particular quality of its unexpectedness,
proved quite my sharpest shock. It was precisely the first night during
this series that, weary with watching, I had felt that I might again
without laxity lay myself down at my old hour. I slept immediately and,
as I afterward knew, till about one o'clock; but when I woke it was
to sit straight up, as completely roused as if a hand had shook me.
I had left a light burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant
certainty that Flora had extinguished it. This brought me to my feet
and straight, in the darkness, to her bed, which I found she had left.
A glance at the window enlightened me further, and the striking of a match
completed the picture.

The child had again got up--this time blowing out the taper, and had again,
for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind
the blind and was peering out into the night. That she now saw--
as she had not, I had satisfied myself, the previous time--was proved