He read the reference in the objects about her--the general one to places and times; but after a minute he distinguished among them a small portrait of a gentleman.

At a distance and without their glasses his eyes were only so caught by it as to feel a vague curiosity.

Presently this impulse carried him nearer, and in another moment he was staring at the picture in stupefaction and with the sense that some sound had broken from him.
He was further conscious that he showed his companion a white face when he turned round on her gasping: "Acton Hague!" She matched his great wonder.

"Did you know him ?" "He was the friend of all my youth--of my early manhood.

And _you_ knew him ?" She coloured at this and for a moment her answer failed; her eyes embraced everything in the place, and a strange irony reached her lips as she echoed: "Knew him ?" Then Stransom understood, while the room heaved like the cabin of a ship, that its whole contents cried out with him, that it was a museum in his honour, that all her later years had been addressed to him and that the shrine he himself had reared had been passionately converted to this use.
It was all for Acton Hague that she had kneeled every day at his altar.
What need had there been for a consecrated candle when he was present in the whole array?
The revelation so smote our friend in the face that he dropped into a seat and sat silent.