She could hear Robinson coming in. He put up the lights, and out of the obscurity flashed the face of the portrait almost to the point of speech. "Do you mean that one ought and can live in marriage without help and without sympathy?" she asked, and her voice trembled a little. He answered, "I mean that. May I quote you lines that you probably know, lines of a more strenuous character than that line from 'Becket.'" And he quoted-- "'For even the purest delight may pall, And power must fail, and the pride must fall, And the love of the dearest friends grow small, But the glory of the Lord is all in all.'" They could hear the swish of the heavy curtains as Robinson pulled them over the windows. "And yet----" she said. Here a queer spasm came in her throat. She was moving towards the open door, for she felt that she could not bear to hear any more. He followed her. "And yet----?" he persisted. "I only mean," she said, and she compelled her voice to be steady, "what is the glory of the Lord? Is it anything but love--love of other people?" She went through the open door slowly and turned to the shallow stairs that led to her bedroom. She could not hear whether he went to his library or not. She was glad that she did not meet anybody in the corridor. The doors were shut. She locked her door and went up to the dressing-table. The little oval picture case was lying there. She laid her hand upon it, but did not move it. She stood, pressing her fingers upon it. Then she moved away. Even the memory of the past was fading from her life; her future would contain nothing--to remember. She moved about the room. Wasn't duty enough to fill her life? Wasn't it enough for her to know that she was helping in her small way to build up the future of the race? Why could she not be content with that? Perhaps, when white hairs came and wrinkles, and her prime was past, she might be content! But until then.... CHAPTER XVIII THE MORAL CLAIMS OF AN UMBRELLA The ghost was, so to speak, dead, as far as any mention of him was made at the Lodgings. But in the servants' quarters he was very much alive. The housemaid, who had promised not to tell "any one" that Miss Scott had seen a ghost, kept her word with literal strictness, by telling every one. Robinson was of opinion that the general question of ghosts was still an open one. Also that he had never heard in his time, or his father's, of the Barber's ghost actually appearing in the Warden's library. When the maids expressed alarm, he reproved them with a grumbling scorn. If ghosts did ever appear, he felt that the Lodgings had a first-class claim to one; ghosts were "classy," he argued. Had any one ever heard tell of a ghost haunting a red brick villa or a dissenting chapel?