The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories

‘She’s a bit of a coquette, you know.’ ‘Don’t say that – don’t say that!’ Mrs Marden murmured. ‘The nicest girls always are – just a little,’ I was magnanimous enough to plead. ‘Then why are they always punished?’ The intensity of the question startled me – it had come out in a vivid flash. Therefore I had to think a moment before I put to her: ‘Wh

Afternoon tea, when the dusk fell early, was a friendly hour at Tranton; the firelight played into the wide white last-century hall; sympathies almost confessed themselves, lingering together, before dressing, on deep sofas, in muddy boots, for last words after walks; and even solitary absorption in the third volume of a novel that was wanted by so

It had only then – as the girl flitted away – come home to me that her daughter was unconscious of what had happened. It was that, oddly enough, that gave me a sudden sharp shake – not my own perception of our visitor, which felt quite natural. It made the fact vivid to me that she had been equally unaware of him in church, and the two facts togeth

I leaned over the rail dividing the King’s Road from the beach, and I think I had smoked a cigarette, when I became conscious of an intended joke in the shape of a light walking-stick laid across my shoulders. The idea, I found, had been thrown off by Teddy Bostwick of the Rifles2 and was intended as a contribution to talk. Our talk came off as we

I wandered about Rome, revolving these questions, and one afternoon found myself in the Pantheon.24 A light spring shower had begun to fall, and I hurried for refuge into the great temple which its Christian altars have but half converted into a church. No Roman monument retains a deeper impress of ancient life, or verifies more forcibly those prod

‘There’s been a great talk about the pagan persecutions; but the Christians persecuted as well, and the old gods were worshipped in caves and woods as well as the new. And none the worse for that! It was in caves and woods and streams, in earth and air and water, they dwelt. And there – and here, too, in spite of all your Christian lustrations – a

He stood pouting his great lips in some old Roman’s garden two thousand years ago. He saw the sandalled feet treading the alleys and the rose-crowned heads bending over the wine; he knew the old feasts and the old worship, the old Romans and the old gods. As I sit here he speaks to me, in his own dumb way, and describes it all!

Meanwhile, however, the Count’s infatuation was no laughing matter, and I expressed my sincerest conviction when I said, after a pause, that I should recommend him to see either a priest or a physician. He burst into uproarious laughter. ‘A priest! What should I do with a priest, or he with me? I never loved them, and I feel less like beginning tha

Give us some wholesome young fellow of our own blood, who’ll play us none of these dusky old-world tricks. Painter as I am, I’ll never recommend a picturesque husband!’