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I used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought strange things about them; and the circumstances that these things only made them more interesting was not by itself a direct aid to keeping them in the dark.  I trembled lest they should see that they were so immensely more interesting.  Putting things at the worst, at all events, as in meditation I so often did, any clouding of their innocence could only be – blameless and foredoomed as they were – a reason the more for taking risks.  There were moments when I knew myself to catch them up by an irresistible impulse and press them to my heart.  As soon as I had done so I used to wonder – ‘What will they think of that?  Doesn’t it betray too much?’   It would have been easy to get into a sad wild tangle about how much I might betray; but the real account, I feel, of the hours of peace I could still enjoy was that the immediate charm of my companions was a beguilement still effective even under the shadow of the possibility that it was studied.