XVThe business was practically settled from the moment I neverfollowed him. It was a pitiful surrender to agitation, but my beingaware of this had somehow no power to restore me. I only sat thereon my tomb and read into whatmy little friend had said to me thefullness of its meaning; by the time I had grasped the whole ofwhich I had also embraced, for absence, the pretext that I wasashamed to offer my pupils and the rest of the congregation such anexample of delay. What Isaid to myself above all was that Miles hadgot something out of me and that the proof of it, for him, would bejust this awkward collapse. He had got out of me that there wassomething I was much afraid of and that he should probably be ableto make useof my fear to gain, for his own purpose, more freedom.My fear was of having
