Chapter 24

My sense of how he received the suffered for a minute from something that I can describe

only as a fierce split of my attention.

A stroke that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind movement of

getting hold of him, drawing him close, and while I just fell for support against the nearest

piece of furniture, instinctively keeping him with his back to the window.

The appearance was full upon us that I'd already had to deal with here.

Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel before prison.

The next thing I saw was that from outside he had reached the window, and then I knew

that close to the glass and glaring in through it he offered once more to the room his white

face of damnation.

It represents, but grossly, what took place within me at the sight to say that on the

second my decision was made.

Yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time recovered her grasp

of the act.

It came to me in the very horror of the immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and

facing what I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware.

The inspiration I can call it by no other name was that I felt how voluntarily I might.

It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it,

I saw how the human soul held out in the tremor of my hands at arm's length had a perfect

view of sweat on a lovely, childish forehead.

The face that was close to mine was as white as the face against the glass, and out of it

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