There they shrink from or rush to embrace ghosts of their
own creation just the same as any fool-man would.

"No. I suppose the girl Flora went on that errand reasonably. And
then, why! This was the moment for which she had lived. It was her
only point of contact with existence. Oh yes. She had been assisted by
the Fynes. And kindly. Certainly. Kindly. But that's not enough.
There is a kind way of assisting our fellow-creatures which is enough to
break their hearts while it saves their outer envelope. How cold, how
infernally cold she must have felt--unless when she was made to burn
with indignation or shame. Man, we know, cannot live by bread alone but
hang me if I don't believe that some women could live by love alone. If
there be a flame in human beings fed by varied ingredients earthly and
spiritual which tinge it in different hues, then I seem to see the
colour of theirs. It is azure ... What the devil are you laughing
at..."

Marlow jumped up and strode out of the shadow as if lifted by
indignation but there was the flicker of a smile on his lips. "You say
I don't know women. Maybe. It's just as well not to come too close to
the shrine. But I have a clear notion of _woman_. In all of them,
termagant, flirt, crank, washerwoman, blue-stocking, outcast and even in
the ordinary fool of the ordinary commerce there is something left, if
only a spark. And when there is a spark there can always be a flame..."

He went back into the shadow and sat down again.

"I don't mean to say that Flora de Barral was one of the sort that could
live by love alone. In fact she had managed to live without. But
still, in the distrust of herself and of others she looked for love, any
kind of love, as women will. And that confounded jail was the only spot
where she could see it--for she had no reason to distrust her father."

She was there in good time. I see her gazing across the road at these
walls which are, properly speaking, awful. You do indeed seem to feel
along the very lines and angles of the unholy bulk, the fall of time,
drop by drop, hour by hour, leaf by leaf, with a gentle and implacable
slowness. And a voiceless melancholy comes over one, invading,
overpowering like a dream, penetrating and mortal like poison.

When de Barral came out she experienced a sort of shock to see that he
was exactly as she remembered him. Perhaps a little smaller. Otherwise
unchanged. You come out in the same clo