"All men," said Bingham, leaning back in his chair and regarding his two listeners with veiled attention—"all men like to hear a woman say sweet, tender, hopeful things, even if they don't believe them. As for myself, Mrs. Dashwood, I admit that your 'higher optimism' haunts me too at times; at rare times when, for instance, the weather in Oxford is dry and bright and bracing."
If he had for a moment doubted it since the afternoon at the Hardings', Bingham was now sure, as sure as a man can be of what is unconfessed in words, that between this man and woman sitting at the table with him was some secret sensitive interest that was not friendship.
How did this conviction affect Bingham and Bingham's spirits? It certainly did not put a stop to his flow of talk. Rather, he talked the more; he was even more sweetly cynical and amiably scintillating than usual. If his heart was wounded, and he himself 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."