"I think he is wonderful." "And you believe in him?" "Yes, I believe in him, because his ideas only give form and substance to the thoughts that have haunted me ever since I began to think." "Grisly thoughts?" "No, Claude; happy thoughts. When I first read my father's poetry and began to think about him--in my dull grey room in Grannie's lodgings--I had a feeling that he was near me. He was there; but behind the veil. When I read 'In Memoriam' the feeling grew stronger, and I knew that death is not the end of love. There was nothing that shocked or startled me in what Mr. Symeon told me yesterday." "About 'Us,' the spiritual club, in which the dead and the living are members on the same footing? The club that elects, or selects, Confucius or Browning one day, and Lady Fanny Ransom--mad Lady Fanny as they call her--the next?" "I saw nothing to ridicule in a companionship of lofty minds. But you know more about the society than I do. Perhaps you are a member?" Claude answered first with a light gay laugh, and then in his most languid voice. "Not I! I am of the earth earthy, sensual, sinful. If I went to one of their meetings I should have to go disguised as a poodle. Lady Fanny owns a fine Russian, that has a look of Mephisto, though I believe he is purely canine." "Tell me all you know about their meetings." "Imagine a Quakers' meeting, with the female members in Parisian frocks and hats--a large room at the back of Symeon's chambers in the 'Albany.' It was once a fashionable editor's library, smelling of Russia leather, and gay with Zansdorf's bindings--but it is now the abode of shadow, 'where glowing embers through the room, teach light to counterfeit a gloom.' And there the congregation sits in melancholy silence, till somebody, Lady Fanny or another, begins to say things that have been borne in upon her from Shakespeare or Browning, or Marlowe or Schopenhauer; or her favourite bishop, if she is pious. They wait for inspiration as the Quakers do. I am told Lady F. is tremendous. She is strong upon politics, and is frankly socialistic; she has communications from Karl Marx and Fourier, George Eliot and Comte. Her inspiration takes the widest range, and moves her to the wildest speech; but she is greatly admired. They never have a blank day when she is there." "I should like to hear her. I know she is eccentric; but she is immensely clever, and she seems to have read everything worth reading, in half a dozen languages." "She crams her expansive brain with the best books; but I am told she occasionally puts them in upside down, and the author's views came out topsy-turvy. You are of imagination all compact, Vera; but I should be sorry to see you lapsing into Fannytude." "You scoff at everything. There is nothing serious for you in this world or the next."