f was not sure whether it
was or not, he hid that heart successfully in a sheath of his own
sparks.

A pause came when Robinson put out the light over the carving-table and
withdrew with Robinson Junior. The dining-room was silent. Bingham drank
some wine, the Warden mused, and May Dashwood sat with her eyes on a
glass of water by her, looking at it as if she could see some vision in
its transparency. The fire was glowing a deep red in the great stone
chimney-piece at the further end of the room. A coal fell forward upon
the hearth with a strangely solitary sound. Bingham glanced towards the
fire and then round the room, and then at his host, and lastly at May
Dashwood.

"I heard a rumour," he said, and he took a sip of his claret, "that your
college ghost had made an appearance!"

There came another silence in the room.

"One doesn't know how such rumours come about," continued Bingham;
"perhaps you hadn't even heard of this one?" He looked across at May and
round at the Warden. Neither of them seemed to be aware that a question
was being asked.

"I didn't know King's even claimed a ghost," said Bingham again. "I've
heard of the ghost of Shelley in the High," he added, smiling. "A ghost
for the tourist who comes to see the Shelley Memorial."

May looked down rather closely at the table.

The Warden moved stiffly. "I don't believe Shelley would want to come,"
he said. "He always despised his Alma Mater."

"He was a bit of an _enfant terrible_," said Bingham, "from the tutor's
point of view."

May raised her eyes with relief; the Warden had parried the question of
the ghost with skill.

"And I don't believe," said the Warden, "that any one returns who has
merely roystered within our walls," and he smiled.

Bingham was now looking very attentively at the Warden out of his dark
eyes.

"Jeremy Bentham," he said, "seems to have been afraid of ghosts, when he
was an undergraduate here. He was afraid of barging against them on dark
college staircases. It's a fear I can't grasp. I would much rather come
into collision with any ghost than with the Stroke of the 'Varsity
Eight, whether the staircase was dark or not."

"If there are ghosts," said the Warden, pensively, "I should expect to
see Cranmer, on some wild night, wandering near the places where he
endured his passion and his death. Or I should expect to see Laud pacing
the streets, amazed at the order and discipline of modern Oxford. If
personal attachmen