The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories

That circumstances might oblige him to withdraw from her she perfectly understood; that he actually felt himself to be less committed appalled her. It confounded all her assumptions, that something so deeply attested should prove totally unpredictable.

“This may sound crazy,” he would say, “but I still want her. I can’t help it. I’ve never thought about killing anyone, but in that courtroom I could have killed her. She knew all along what she was doing, I never would have believed it.”

la meilleure amie d’une autre jeune femme, mariée celle-là, s’en vient vivre avec eux, et puis, à son insu, en toute innocence, mais sans merci, entreprend d’épouser le mari. Quand ce dernier est un écrivain occupé une bonne partie de la journée à une tâche difficile, et n’est donc pas pour sa femme un compagnon ou un partenaire digne de ce nom, l’

He went out of the house, but as his blood cooled he felt that the chief result of the discussion was a deposit of dread within him at the idea of opening with his wife in future subjects which might again urge him to violent speech. It was as if a fracture in delicate crystal had begun, and he was afraid of any movement that might make it fatal. H