"This is not the first time you've interfered. You've made free with my latchkey before this. Julia Oliphant knows about me; who told her, and who gave you permission? It seems to me I've been pretty patient. I'm not saying you've not been decent about some things, that time when I was slipping about all over the scale, but I'm warning you now. I've listened to all you had to say. I've met you at every point. I've even offered--I'm hanged if I know why--not to write or paint again if that will please you. But beyond that----" Then came an outburst the contempt of which I cannot reproduce. "Writing! Painting! Books! Pictures! As if _they_ had any more to do with life than a baby playing with its doll! They're to help fools to think they're thinking. They're to make 'em believe that but for some slight accident they could do the same themselves--as they could, and do! They call a thing like that a 'gift'; but what's the Gift that Life still has to give when they've said their very last word--they and their schools? What's been there all the time, waiting for us to get the dust out of our eyes?... George Coverham, try to come between me and that and as sure as God will bring to-morrow morning I'll put a stop to your arithmetic for ever! What do I care if I have to take a new name every day? What do I care if your friends the Airds bundle you out of the house? Do you think it matters to me whose father and mother and family history and papers I steal? That's all life seems to mean to some of you. 'Where did he come from? Who knows him? Is he French or English? What does he do for his living? Has he paid his Income Tax? Is he respectable? What did he do in the war? Where does he bank? What's his club? Where does he live and how much is his rateable value?' You can't see a man for all _that_! You can't even see me now for Derwent Rose and his tombstones of books! By Jove, I said I was a ghost once! But that was when I was on the slide! I'm no ghost now! It's you others who are the ghosts! It's you who'd better get off the map! J'y suis, j'y reste; I'm here--here!" And again Fréhel showed him there--young, beautiful, indomitable and ruthless.