The Turn of the Screw

by Henry James

The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be,

“That she should never trouble him — but never, never: neither appeal nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and let him alone.

his indescribable little air of knowing nothing in the world but love.

I can hear again, as I write, the intense hush in which the sounds of evening dropped.

Was there a “secret” at Bly — a mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement?

On the spot there came to me the added shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there. He had come for someone else.