The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

PART THREE

THE UNRAVELLING

'I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and

within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the

appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the instant

confounding and bottomless, for if he were innocent, what then on

earth was I? Paralysed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of the

question, I let him go a little . . .'

From The Turn of the Screw (1898), by Henry James