The Turn of the Screw

IX

IXI waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, tooksomething from my consternation. A very few of them, in fact,passing, in constant sight of my pupils, without a fresh incident,sufficedto give to grievous fancies and even to odious memories akind of brush of the sponge. I have spoken of the surrender totheir extraordinary childish grace as a thing I could activelycultivate, and it may be imagined if I neglected now to addressmyselfto this source for whatever it would yield. Stranger than Ican express, certainly, was the effort to struggle against my newlights; it would doubtless have been, however, a greater tensionstill had it not been so frequently successful. I used to wonderhowmy little charges could help guessing that I thought strange thingsabout them; and the circumstances t