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Chapter 13

It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as much as ever an effort beyond my strength,

offered in close quarters difficulties as insurmountable as before.

This situation continued a month, and with new aggravations and particular notes,

the note above all, sharper and sharper, of the small, ironic consciousness on the part of my pupils.

It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, my mere infernal imagination.

It was absolutely traceable that they were aware of my predicament,

that the strange relation made in a manner, for a long time, the air in which we moved.

I don't mean that they had their tongues and their cheeks, or did anything vulgar,

for that was not one of their dangers.

I do mean, on the other hand, that the element of the unnamed and untouched became between us,

greater than any other, and that so much avoidance could not have been so successfully affected,

without a great deal of tacit arrangement.

It was as if, at moments, we were perpetually coming into sight of subjects, before which we must stop short,

turning suddenly, out of alleys that we perceived to be blind.

Closing with a little bang that made us look at each other, for, like all bangs,

...