I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: "They _know_--it's too monstrous: they know, they know!"
"And what on earth----?" I felt her incredulity as she held me.
"Why, all that _we_ know--and heaven knows what else besides!" Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only now with full coherency even to myself. "Two hours ago, in the garden"--I could scarce articulate--"Flora _saw_!"
Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. "She has told you?" she panted.
"Not a word--that's the horror. She kept it to herself! The child of eight, _that_ child!" Unutterable still, for me, was the stupefaction of it.
Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. "Then how do you know?"
"I was there--I saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly aware."
"No--of _her_." I was conscious as I spoke that I looked prodigious things, for I got the slow reflection of them in my companion's face. "Another person--this time; but a figure of quite as unmistakeable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful--with such an air also, and such a face!--on the other side of the lake. I was there with the child--quiet for the hour; and in the midst of it she came."
"From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there--but not so near."
"Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close as you!"
My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. "Was she someone you've never seen?"
"Yes. But someone the child has. Someone _you_ have." Then, to show how I had thought it all out: "My predecessor--the one who died."
"Miss Jessel. You don't believe me?" I pressed.
She turned right and left in her distress. "How can you be sure?"
This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of impatience. "Then ask Flora--_she's_ sure!" But I had no sooner spoken than I caught myself up. "No, for God's sake, _don't_! She'll say she isn't--she'll lie!"
Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. "Ah, how _can_ you?"
"Because I'm clear. Flora doesn't want me to know."
"No, no--there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it the more I fear. I don't know what I _don't_ see--what I _don't_ fear!"