―Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries? John Eglinton’s carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid for ever. She died, for literature at least, before she was born.

―She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She saw him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She bore his children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed when he lay on his deathbed.

Mother’s deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into this world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. Liliata rutilantium.

I wept alone.

John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.

―The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got out of it as quickly and as best he could.