二つの魔法：ねじの回転、覆い隠された結末

XX

The name falls like a pane of glass shattering. Flora’s face receives the blow with a hard, still gravity that is wholly new. She does not flinch toward the direction in which the governess points; instead she fixes the governess with a look of steady, unprecedented reprobation, as though reading and judging her. On the opposite bank Miss Jessel stands exactly as she had stood before, rigid and undimmed. The governess cries out in triumph, in justification, in gratitude, seizing Mrs. Grose and thrusting her toward the sight. But Mrs. Grose sees nothing. She groans in negation, repulsion, and relief at her own exemption, and the governess feels her situation horribly crumble. The ghost seems to press harder on her defeat.

Mrs. Grose turns on her with a flushed protest, breaking into breathless reassurance for the child. Flora, who all this while has stood holding tight to Mrs. Grose’s dress, delivers her verdict in the words of a vulgarly pert street girl. She does not know what the governess means. She sees nobody. She sees nothing. She has never seen anything. She thinks the governess cruel and does not like her. Then she demands to be taken away, buried in Mrs. Grose’s skirts, wailing that she wants to be taken from the governess. The incomparable childish beauty has vanished; the little face has turned hard and common, almost ugly.

The governess sadly shakes her head. “If I had ever doubted, all my doubt would at present have gone,” she says. She has lost Flora. She bids her goodbye and frantically orders Mrs. Grose to take the child back to the house. Left alone, she throws herself on the ground and gives way to a wildness of grief. When she raises her head the day is almost done, and she makes her dreary way back alone.

That evening she sees a great deal of Miles. He appears at about eight o’clock and sits with her in silence by the schoolroom fire. They pass two portentous hours together in absolute stillness, and yet she feels he wants to be with her.