The searcher might have turned and caught me; there would have been nothing for it then but a scene, and she and I would have had to come all at once, with a sudden clash, to a thorough knowledge of each other: down would have gone conventionalities, away swept disguises, and _I_ should have looked into her eyes, and she into mine--we should have known that we could work together no more, and parted in this life for ever.
Where was the use of tempting such a catastrophe?
I was not angry, and had no wish in the world to leave her.

I could hardly get another employer whose yoke would be so light and so, easy of carriage; and truly I liked Madame for her capital sense, whatever I might think of her principles: as to her system, it did me no harm; she might work me with it to her heart's content: nothing would come of the operation.
Loverless and inexpectant of love, I was as safe from spies in my heart-poverty, as the beggar from thieves in his destitution of purse.
I turned, then, and fled; descending the stairs with progress as swift and soundless as that of the spider, which at the same instant ran down the bannister.
How I laughed when I reached the schoolroom.

I knew now she had certainly seen Dr.John in the garden; I knew what her thoughts were.
The spectacle of a suspicious nature so far misled by its own inventions, tickled me much.

Yet as the laugh died, a kind of wrath smote me, and then bitterness followed: it was the rock struck, and Meribah's waters gushing out.

I never had felt so strange and contradictory an inward tumult as I felt for an hour that evening: soreness and laughter, and fire, and grief, shared my heart between them.