“There will be nothing worth heahghing till he sums up” said her companion and went on to ask her if she meant to attend the next lecture. Miriam perceived that unless she chose to escape forcibly, her companion had her in a close net of conversation. She glanced and saw that her face was already that of a familiar associate, no longer spurring her to trace to its source the strange impression that at first it had given her of being a forgotten face, whose sudden return, unrecognisably disguised, and yet so recognisable, filled her with a remembered sentiment of dislike. “Rather” she said and then, watching the opening prospect of the long series of speeches, and protected by the monotonous booming of a pessimistic male voice “I’m so awfully relieved to find that science is only half true. But I _can’t_ see why he says that metaphysic is no practical use. It would make _all_ the difference every moment, to know for certain that mind is more real than matter.” “Pahghfaitement.” Dr. McHibbert’s voice interrupted her, damming up the urgent flow of communications. She watched him, listening without attention. “He’s like a marvellously intelligent bolster” she said tonelessly “but with a heart and a soul. He certainly has a soul.” Flattered by a soft chuckle of amusement, she added in a low murmuring man’s voice “the objectors are like candle-lit turnip ghosts,” and was rewarded by the first direct glance from the blue eyes, smiling, assuring her that she was acceptable. The ghost of the remembered face was laid. Whoever it was, if in reality it were to reappear in her life, she would be able to overcome her aversion by bold flirtation. When the lecturer at last rose to reply, the guiding phrases of his discourse were the worn familiar keys of a past experience. Used for the second time at the doors of the chambers they had opened within the background of life, they grated, hesitating, and the heavy sound threw the bright spaces into shadow and spread a film of doubt over Miriam’s eagerness to escape and share her illumination with people waiting outside in the surrounding gloom. The light would return and remain for her. But it was something accomplished unaccountably. The mere reproduction of the magic phrases, even when after solitary peaceful contemplation she should have reassembled them in their right relations and their marvellously advancing sequence, would not carry her hearers along the road she had travelled. The something that held them together, lively and enlivening, was incommunicable. “Don’t huggy away. The audience will take a considerable time to disperse.”