surface the comment of the man on Miss Hernshaw's right wandered
indefatigably.

Hewson could not imagine of her sincerity a deliberate purpose of letting
the poor fellow show all the shallowness that was in him, and of amusing
itself with his satisfaction in turning his empty mind inside out for her
inspection. She seemed, if not genuinely interested, to be paying him an
unaffected attention; but when the lady across the table addressed a word
to him, Miss Hernshaw, as if she had been watching for some such chance,
instantly turned to Hewson.

"What do you think of 'Ghosts'?" she asked, with imperative suddenness.

"Ghosts?" he echoed.

"Or perhaps you didn't go?" she suggested, and he perceived that she
meant Ibsen's tragedy. But he did not answer at once. He had had a shock,
and for a timeless space he had been back in his room at St. Johnswort,
with that weird figure seated at his table. It seemed to vanish again
when he gave a second glance, as it had vanished before, and he drew a
long sigh, and looked a little haggardly at Miss Hernshaw. "Ah, I see you
did! Wasn't it tremendous? I think the girl who did Regina was simply
awful, don't you?"

"I don't know," said Hewson, still so trammeled in his own involuntary
associations with the word as not fully to realize the strangeness of
discussing "Ghosts" with a young lady. But he pulled himself together,
and nimbly making his reflection that the latitude of the stage gave room
for the meeting of cultivated intelligences in regions otherwise tabooed,
if they were of opposite sexes, he responded in kind. "I think that the