"It will be a fierce one, mother. He intends to use electricity and machines for recording movements and instantaneous photography."
"I am willing, provided he will proceed in co-operation with your father and Watts."
"He will never do that," declared Victor. "He will not begin by granting the very thing he's trying to prove."
It was upon this most solemn conference that Leo descended, pale and restrained, and though Victor sprang up with new-born love in his face, she did not flush with responding warmth. Her mood of the moonlit walk had utterly vanished, and he found himself checked, chilled, and thrust down from his high place of exaltation.
It was as if she (ashamed of her own weakness) had resolved to punish him for presumption. He smarted under her indifference, but made no open protest, though his hand (in the pocket of his coat) rested upon the jeweled sign of her self-surrender.
She lost a little of her indifference when she learned that Bartol had been kept awake all night by the significance of the phenomena he had witnessed, and she joined heartily in declaring that he must be met in every demand. "Oh, I wish I might see the experiments," she exclaimed.
"He wishes you to do so," replied Victor, eagerly. "The Voices told him to have you in the circle, you and Mrs. Joyce—"
"And Marie," added Mrs. Ollnee. "Marie is psychic."
"When do we try?" asked Leo, meeting his eyes a little unsteadily, so it seemed to him.
Again Mrs. Ollnee answered for him. "To-night; Mr. Bartol is telephoning now, arranging for it."
"How do you know?" asked Victor.
"Your father is speaking to me."
"I hear him!" exclaimed Mrs. Joyce, listening intently.
"What does he say?" asked Leo.
Mrs. Ollnee again replied. "He says: 'Be brave—trust us. We will protect you.'"
Looking across at the girl, in whose cheeks the roses were beginning to bloom again, the youth resented the interposition of the supernatural. He was eager to approach her, to hint at the memory of her secret, sweet embrace. As he studied the exquisite curve of her lips their touch burned again upon his flesh, and he rose with sudden reassertion of himself. "Come, Leo, let's return to Morselli."
He had never called her by her first name before, and it produced a shock in them both. She looked her reproof, but he pretended not to see it, and neither Mrs. Joyce nor Mrs. Ollnee seemed to think his familiarity worthy of remark.
Leo coldly answered: "I can only give a little time. We must go home to-day."
Mrs. Joyce promptly said, "We can't desert the ship now, Leo."
"But we have nothing to wear!" the girl retorted.
"We'll send down and have some things brought up. Really, this work for Mr. Bartol is more important than clothes."
"I suppose it is," Leo admitted. "But at the same time one should have a decent regard to the conventions."
The colloquy which followed filled Victor with dismay. It appeared that Leo was really eager to get away, as if she felt herself to be in a false position. "I can't afford to drop my daily affairs in the city. Why can't these experiments be put off for a day or two."
"I don't think we ought to ask a great and busy lawyer to accommodate himself to our piffling social plans," replied Mrs. Joyce. "A few minutes ago you were wild to join these experiments, now you are crazy to go home."
Victor, who imagined himself in full possession of the reason for her pause, said nothing; but his eyes spoke, and the girl was restless under his glance.
She gave in at last. "Well, if you will send for the things I need—"
Victor had come from Bartol's study mightily resolved to do speedily and well any work that might fall to his hand, but as he found himself seated close beside the daylight girl and listening to her voice transposing Morselli into English his resolution weakened. What were ghosts, inventions, theories, compared to the satin-smooth curve of the maiden's cheek or the delicate flutter of her lashes?
Try as he would, his attention wandered. The book smelled of the clinic, the girl of the dawn. Morselli's problem was all of the night, while on every side the young lover beheld trees flashing green mirrors to the sun, and flowers riding like dainty boats on the billows of a soft western wind. Moreover, the girl's voice was like to the purling of brooks.
Twice she reproved him for his wandering wits and laggard pen, and the second time he said: "I can't help it. The time and place invite to other occupations. Let's go for a walk."
"A brave student, you are!" she mocked. "Mr. Bartol will find you a valuable aid in his scientific investigations!"
Her look, her flushed cheek, and the hint of her bosom set him a-tremble. The memory of his midnight visitor returned, filling him with springtime madness.
"Don't you make game of me," he stammered, warningly. "If you do—I'll—"
She raised an amused glance. "What? What will you do, boy?"
"Boy!" Her pose, her smile were challenges that struck home. With swift, outflung arm, he encircled her waist and drew her to his breast. "Boy, am I?"
She beat upon him, pushed him with her small hands. "Let me go, brute!"
He laughed at her, exulting in his strength. "Oh, I am a brute now, am I? Well, I'm not. I'm a man and your master. I want a kiss."
She ceased to struggle, but into her face and voice came something which paralyzed his arms. Repentant and ashamed, he released her and stood before her humbly, while she denounced him for "a rowdy with the manners of a burglar." "This ends our acquaintance," she added, and she spurned the book on the floor as if it were his worthless self.
He was scared now, and boyishly pleaded, "Don't go—don't be angry; I was only joking."
She knew better than this. She had seen elemental fire flaming from his eyes, and dared not remain. With proud lift of head she walked away, leaving him penitent, bewildered, crushed.
In truth, Victor had not kept his head—how could he when each day brought some new temptation, some unexpected danger, or an unforeseen barrier? Was ever such a week of trial and perplexity thrust upon a youth? And the worst of it lay in the fact that there were no signs of a release from these baffling foes. Love's distress now came to add to his bewilderment and alarm.
Leo did not appear at luncheon, and her absence gave him great uneasiness till Mrs. Joyce explained that she had only gone to town to fetch some needed clothing. He still carried the little breast-pin in his pocket, but it no longer seemed the gage of a lovely girl's affection. He began to admit that he might be mistaken, and that his dream-woman and the jewel had no necessary connection. "One of the servants may have dropped it there," he now admitted; "and yet how could that be? It was under my pillow when I woke, and I am sure it was not there when I went to sleep. Perhaps I am the one who walks in sleep. Can it be possible that I took it from her room?"
It was all very puzzling, but he no longer possessed the fatuous self-conceit necessary to charge Leo with such self-abandonment as the dream and the discovery of the brooch had at first seemed to indicate. He sat among his elders at table, silent and depressed, very far from the triumphant mood of the morning, and yet the stream of his admiration set toward the absent one with ever stronger current. The most important thing in all the world, at the moment, was the winning of her forgiving smile.
Bartol was equally distraught, and though he remained politely attentive to his guests, he was plainly absorbed by some inner problem, and left to Mrs. Joyce the burden of the conversation.
Mrs. Ollnee, listless and remote, glanced at her host occasionally in the manner of one who awaits an expected sign. To her son this attitude on her part was repellant, for he understood it to mean that she was neither mother nor guest, but an instrument. He wondered whether Bartol had not, by some overmastering power of the mind, already assumed control of her thoughts as well as of her actions; and he chafed under the pressure of his host's abstraction. "Oh, why can't she quit this business? She must stop it!" he furiously declared.
Altogether they made a serious and restrained company, and all felt the loss of Leo. As the meal progressed Mrs. Joyce tried to secure from Bartol some notion of what his plans were, and he gravely replied:
"None of you must know. No one shall enter my 'ghost-room' till I am ready for my tests. In fact, I think I shall send you all out for a drive this afternoon so that you may not evenhearthe tap of a hammer."
Victor protested that he ought to study, and to this Bartol replied: "Very well. Take a book with you, but go off the farm. I want to be able to say that not one of the persons most interested were on the place while my preparations were going on."
In truth, the man of law was not merely puzzled by the method of transmitting the messages; he had been profoundly affected by the words themselves. His wife and daughter had apparently spoken to him again, each in distinctive way, upon matters which no one but himself could recognize.
But it was not alone what he had himself seen and heard and felt. The reading to which he had set himself had opened a new world of science for him. He was amazed at the enormous amount of direct evidence gathered and presented by careful men. Chemists applying the methods of the retort, biologists working in their own laboratories, psychologists and medical experts experimenting as upon a clinical subject, presented the same or similar facts. In Austria, in Russia, in England, the results were identical. To his mind, accustomed to sift and relate evidence, the most convincing thing of all was the substantial agreement of each and all of these investigators. In a certain sense the sneer of the faithful was deserved. These men of X-ray penetration and electrical annunciators had succeeded only in paralleling the phenomena of the early days of the healer and the magician.
At its lowest terms—or, as some would say, at its highest terms—Mrs. Ollnee's power was related to a sort of transcendental physics. Her magic refilled the most ordinary block of wood or crumb of granite with all its ancient potency. It widened and deepened the physical universe inimitably. It discovered the human organism to be unspeakably subtle and complicate, and made of the soul a visible demonstrable entity. Unthinkably swift as are the vibrations of the radium ray, this substance called the brain is capable of receiving, recording, giving off still more intricate and marvelous motions. Of what avail to call it "material"?
At times he glimpsed (as through a narrow opening) unknown regions of space, not of three or four dimensions, but an infinite number of worlds within worlds interpenetrating, undying, yet forever changing. At such moments he perceived that the scientists of to-day were but children groping among the set scenery of a dark stage, their text-books like their Bibles, the records of the bewildered and stumbling myriads of the past.
"How absurd," he said, "to attempt to make the present conform with the past! The Hebrew scriptures, the Vedas, the Sagas of the North, are all useful as records of the aspirations of primitive men, but the real understanding of the universe is to be obtained now or in the future. The present contains all that the past has possessed and more. Men are less of the beast and more of the spirit. Their powers have intensified, grown psychic, compelling, revealing, and yet the mystery of the universe remains and must remain."
In such ways and others his mind ran as he read swiftly through the wondrous record of experiments made in Rome, in Naples, in Milan. He liked these Italians better than the greatest of the Englishmen for the reason that they uttered no apology to the Pope. They proceeded on the assumption that they were biologists, not priests. They had no care whether their discoveries harmonized with some man's Bible, or whether they did not. The question was simple: Could the human organism put forth from itself a supernumerary hand or arm? Could it project an etheric double of itself? Could it interpenetrate matter?
Along these lines he proposed (with Victor's aid) to study his psychic guest. He had lost sight of the fact that he was to be her defender in court—or if he remembered it, it was only as a secondary consideration. He had no faintest hope of directly proving the continued existence of his wife and children; but he could see that a demonstration of the power of the living body to project and maintain at a distance an etheric brain, a voice, made (by inference) a belief in immortality possible.
This belief, this possible life of the soul, had nothing to do with the systems of celestial cosmogony built up by the followers of Christ or Gautama, its world was not peopled with angels, gods, or devils; it was merely another and inter-fusing material region wherein the spirit of man could move, retaining at least a dim memory of the grosser material plane from which it fled. It was inconceivable, of course, when scrutinized directly; but he caught a glint of its wonders now and then, as if from the corner of his half-closed eye.
These physical marvels were kept very near to him, as he sat at his desk, by minute tappings on his penholder, on his chair-back, and by fairy chimes rung on the cut-glass decanter at his elbow. At times he felt the light touch of hands, and once, as he returned to his seat after a visit to the library, he found a sheet of strange parchment thrust under his book, and on this was written in exquisite old-fashioned script: "Thou hast thy comfort and thy instrument. Hold not thy hand." And it was signed "Aurelius."
This was all very startling; but he referred it to Mrs. Ollnee herself. To imagine it a direct message from the dead was beyond him.
At four o'clock the road-wagon brought from the station a small, alert, and business-like young fellow, accompanied by various boxes, parcels, and bags. Bartol met him at the door and took him at once to his study. Neither of them was seen again till dinner-time.
The servants were profoundly excited by all this, but were too well trained to betray their curiosity above stairs. They knew now who Mrs. Ollnee was, but they believed in their master's government and listened to the hammering in the study with impassive faces—while at their duties in the hall or dining-room—but permitted themselves endless conjecture in their own quarters. Marie alone took no part in these discussions, though she seemed more excited than any of the others.
Meanwhile, Victor watched and waited in a fever of anxiety for Leo's return. At five o'clock she came, but went directly to her room.
Marie met her tense with excitement. "Oh, Miss Leo, Master has asked me to sit in the circle to-night, and I'm scared."
"You mean Mr. Bartol has asked you?"
"Yes—Miss."
"Well, you should feel exalted, Marie. It will be a wonderful experience."
"I suppose so, Miss, but my hands are all cold and my stomach sick with thinking of it."
Leo laughed. "You're psychic, that's what's the matter with you."
"Oh, do you think so!"
"Let me take your hands." Marie gave them. Leo smiled. "Cold and wet! Yes, you areit! But don't let it interfere with dinner. I'm hungry as a bear. Cheer up. I'd give anything to be a psychic."
"I shall flunk it, Miss; I can't go through it, really."
"Nonsense! It will be good as a play."
Half an hour later the others came in, and Leo heard Victor's voice in the hall with a feeling of distaste. She had gone out to him during that moonlit walk, and was suffering now a natural revulsion. It had not been love; it had been (she admitted) only physical attraction, and the fault, the weakness, had been hers. His presuming upon her moment of compliance was of the nature of man. It had frightened her to discover such deeps within herself. "We are all animals at bottom," she charged, in the unnatural cynicism of youth.
Notwithstanding this mood, she clothed herself handsomely in a gown which lent beauty to the exceedingly dignified rôle she designed to play, and so costumed went to her aunt's room to hear the news.
Mrs. Joyce was lying down, and her voice sounded tired as she said: "We were ordered out of the house at three, and have been driving ever since. Alexander, so Marie says, has had strange men working all the afternoon on some contrivance in his study. Evidently he is going to be very scientific."
Leo exclaimed with delight. "Now we'll see if these faces and forms are real or not."
"Why, Leo! Do you doubt?"
"Yes, deep in my heart I do. I cannot quite free myself from the belief that in some way Lucy produces all these effects."
"Of course she transmits them. She's a medium."
"I don't mean it that way—and I don't mean that she cheats; but somehow I never feel as if anything real came to me direct."
Mrs. Joyce did not feel able to pursue this line of argument. "What's the matter between you and Victor?"
"Who told you anything was the matter?"
"I sensed it."
"Well, why didn't you sense the cause?"
"He's a nice boy; you mustn't ill-treat him, Leo."
"Your solicitude is misplaced; you should be concerned about me."
"You? Trust you to take care of yourself! I never knew a more self-sufficient young person. I am only waiting for some man to teach you your place."
This was a frequent subject of very plain though jocular allusion between them. "A man may—some time—but not a rowdy boy. How does Lucy take the promise of a test?"
"Very calmly. She is relying wholly on her 'band' to protect her. She feels the importance of the trial, and does not shrink from it."
The Miss Wood whom Victor met as he entered the dining-room that night was precisely the young lady he had first seen, a calm, smiling, superior person who looked down upon him with good-humored tolerance of his youth and sex, putting him into the position of the bad little boy who has promised not to do so again. She not merely loftily forgave him, she had apparently minimized the offense, and this hurt worst of all. "I'm sorry not to have been able to work to-day," she said; "but I really had to go to town."
This lofty, elderly sister air after her compliance to his arm eventually angered him. His awe, his gratitude of the morning were turned into the man's desire to be master. He set his jaws in sullen slant and bided his time. "You can't treat me in this way when we're alone," he said, beneath his breath.
Later he was hurt by her vivid interest in the young inventor, whom Bartol introduced as Stinchfield. He was a small man with a round, red face and laughing blue eyes, but he spoke with authority. His knowledge was amazing for its wide grasp, but especially for its precision. He guessed at nothing; he knew—or if he did not know he said so frankly. In the few short years of his professional career he had been associated with some of the greatest masters of matter. His acquaintances were all men of exact information and trained judgment, men who lived amid physical miracles and wrought epics in steel and stone.
Naturally he absorbed the attention of the table, for in answer to questions he touched upon his career, and his talk was absorbing. He had been a year at Panama. He had helped to survey the route for a vast Colorado irrigating tunnel, and in his spare moments had perfected a number of important inventions in automobile construction.
It was for all these reasons that Bartol had 'phoned him, urging him to come out and assist in the infinitely more important work of reducing to law the phenomena which sprang, apparently without rule or reason, from the trances of his latest and most interesting client. "Here is your chance to get a grip on the phenomena that have puzzled the world for centuries," he said.
When Mrs. Joyce asked Stinchfield if he knew anything about spirit phenomena, he replied, candidly:
"Not a thing, directly, Mrs. Joyce. Of course I have read a good deal, but I have never experimented. It is not easy to secure co-operation on the part of those gifted with these powers. The trouble seems to be they consider themselves in a sense priests, keepers of a faith, whereas I have the natural tendency to think of them in terms of physics."
Bartol, smiling, raised a hand. "I don't want the company drawn into controversy. Experts agree that argument defeats a psychic."
Mrs. Ollnee still wore the look of one who but half listens to what is said, and Mrs. Joyce slyly touched her hand with the tips of her fingers. "Do you want to go to your room?" she asked.
Mrs. Ollnee shook her head. "No, I am all right."
"We will have better results if we 'cut out' dessert," Mrs. Joyce explained to Bartol. "Over-eating has spoiled many a séance."
"Is it as physical as that?" exclaimed Stinchfield.
"I never eat when I am on a hard case," said Bartol.
Victor began to awaken to the crucial nature of the test which was about to be made of his mother's powers. This laughing young physicist was precisely the sort of man to put the screws severely on. It was all a problem in mechanics for him. Whether the psychic suffered or rejoiced in the operation did not concern him. "If she is deceiving us in any way he will discover it," the son forecasted, with a feeling of fear at his heart. "And yet how can I defend her?"
Bartol said to Mrs. Ollnee: "Would you mind dressing for the performance? I'd like you to go with Mrs. Joyce and Marie, and clothe yourself in all black if possible, so that I can say you came into my study not merely searched, but re-clothed."
She said, quite simply: "I have no objection at all. I am in your hands."
After the older women left the room Victor drew near to Leo with a low word. "Poor little mother! she is in the hands of the inquisition to-night."
Thrilling to the excitement of the hour, she forgot her resentful superior pose. "Isn't that little man magnificent? Why didn't you go in for civil engineering or chemistry?"
"Because no one had sense enough to advise me," he bitterly answered.
"Think where that funny little body has carried that head," she continued, still studying Stinchfield. "If he had only been given shoulders like yours—"
"I'm glad you like something about me."
"I was speaking of your body as a machine for carrying a brain around over the earth."
"You seem to think of me as having no brain."
"Oh, not quite so bad as that. You have a brain, but it's undeveloped."
"I'm growing up rapidly these days. Seems like I'd lived a year since our walk last night."
She colored a little. "Forget that and I'll forgive you."
"I can't forget that."
"Have you any idea what the tests are to be?" she asked, in an effort to change the subject.
"No, I'm outside of it all. I hope they won't scare my poor little mother out of her senses. Ought I to step in and stop it?"
"No, not unless The Voices say so. They welcome investigation—so they've always said. What I should insist on, if I were you, is plenty of time and a series of sittings."
She was speaking now in gracious mood, and he, eager to win from her a fuller expression of forgiveness, spoke again, bravely. "I hope you are not going to be angry with me?"
"Not at all," she replied, with disheartening, impersonal cordiality. "I was partly to blame. I forgot you were a hot-headed boy."
"Don't take that tone with me—I won't stand it!"
"How can you help it?" she answered, with a smile, and moved toward the end of the table where Bartol and Stinchfield still sat smoking and leisurely sipping their coffee.
The little engineer sprang up as she drew near, and stood like a soldier at attention as she said, "Are you in merciless mood to-night, Mr. Stinchfield?"
"Far from it," he responded. "I'm in a receptive mood. The fact that Mr. Bartol has found enough in this subject to wish to investigate predisposes me to open-mindedness."
"Suppose we go into the library," suggested Bartol, and they all followed him across the hall.
Leo walked with the engineer, leaving Victor in the rear, hurt and suffering sorely.
It was not so much her displayed interest in Stinchfield as her haughty disregard of himself that touched his self-esteem. Thereafter he sulked like the boy she declared him to be.
When his mother came in robed in black and looking the sad young widow he was on the verge of rebellion against the whole plan of action, but he kept silence while Bartol explained his design.
"It is customary for 'mediums' to have things their own way, but in this case Mrs. Ollnee has placed herself entirely in my hands. The tests will be made in my study." He turned the key and unlocked the door. "Mr. Stinchfield will enter first and see that the room is as we left it."
The engineer entered, and after a moment's survey called: "All is untouched. Come in."
Bartol led the way with Mrs. Ollnee, and when Victor, the last to enter, had paced slowly over the threshold Stinchfield locked the door and handed the key to his host. The inquisition was begun.
The most notable furnishing of the room was a battery of three cameras, so arranged that they could be operated instantaneously, and Mrs. Joyce asked, anxiously, "Has the band consented to this?"
"They have consented to a trial," answered Mrs. Ollnee, in a faint voice. She had grown very pale, and her hands were trembling. To Victor this seemed like the tremor of terror, and his heart was aching with pity.
On one side of the room a deep alcove lined with books had been turned into a dark-room by means of curtains, and before these draperies stood the inevitable wooden table, but beside it, inclosing a chair, was a conical cage of wire netting encircled by bands of copper.
Mrs. Joyce exclaimed, "You do not intend to cage her in that?"
"That is my intention," calmly replied Bartol.
"Have the controls consented?" asked Mrs. Joyce.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Ollnee.
Of the further intricacies of Stinchfield's preparation Victor had no hint, so artfully were they concealed; but he recognized in it all a kind of humorous skepticism (which the engineer radiated in spite of his manifest wish to appear respectful); and as his mother entered her little torture tent Victor said, "You needn't do this if you don't want to, mother."
"Your father commands it," she replied, submissively.
Stinchfield screwed the cage to the floor and made an attachment to a small wire which ran along the book-case to a dark corner. Victor was enough of the physicist to infer that his mother was now surrounded by an electric current.
Bartol explained: "We are to start in total darkness, and then we intend to try various degrees and colors of lights. Mrs. Ollnee, how will you have us sit?"
"I want Victor opposite me, with Leo at his right and Louise at his left. Mr. Stinchfield will then be able to operate his wires. You, Mr. Bartol, sit at Leo's right and nearest the cage." Her voice was now quite firm, and her manner decided. "All sit at the table for a time."
Stinchfield snapped out the lights, one by one, till only two, one red, the other green, struggled against the darkness. When these went out the room was perfectly black.
Bartol then said: "In the cabinet behind the medium is a self-registering column of mercury, a typewriter, and a switch, which will light a lamp which hangs in the ceiling above the cabinet, and which has no other connection. The psychic is inclosed in a mesh of steel wire too fine to permit the putting forth of a finger. If the lamp is lighted, the column of mercury lifted, or the typewriter keys depressed, it will be by some supra-normal power of the medium. There is also on a table just inside the curtains, with paper and pencils, a small tin trumpet, a bell, and a zither upon it. If possible, we wish to obtain a written message independent of Mrs. Ollnee."
"It is the unexpected that happens," remarked Mrs. Joyce. "Shall we clasp hands, Lucy?"
"Yes," answered Mrs. Ollnee.
Victor, reaching for Leo's hand, tingled with something not scientific, a current of something subtler than electricity which came from her palm. He thought he detected in her fingers a returning warmth of grasp.
"They are here," announced Mrs. Joyce, after some ten minutes of silence.
"Who are here?" asked Bartol.
"My band—and many others."
"How can you tell?"
"I hear them." A faint whisper soon distinguished itself, and Mrs. Joyce reported that Mr. Blodgett was speaking. "He says he realizes the importance of this test, and that he has summoned all the most powerful of the spirits within reach, and that they will do all they can. He says the wire cage is a new condition, but they will meet it. Be patient; the strain on Lucy is very great, but it cannot be avoided."
In the silence which followed this conversation Leo shuddered and clutched Victor's hand as if for protection. "The other world is opening. Don't you feel it?" She whispered. "I can hear the rustle of wings."
He, growing very tense himself, answered: "I feel only my mother's anxiety. Are you comfortable, mother?" he asked.
She did not reply, and Mrs. Joyce said, "She is asleep." And all became silent again.
"Hello!" exclaimed Stinchfield. "Who touched me?"
"No one in the circle," answered Mrs. Joyce, highly elated.
"I certainly felt a hand on my shoulder—there it comes again! Shall I flash my camera?"
"Not now!" came a clear, full whisper, apparently from the cabinet. "You would fail now. Wait."
"Who spoke?" asked Bartol.
As there was no reply, Mrs. Joyce asked, "Is it you, Mr. Blodgett?"
"No!" the whisper replied.
"Is it Watts?"
"Yes."
"It is Isaac Watts. Now it is his science against yours, Mr. Stinchfield."
Bartol fell into the mode at once. "We are glad to be so honored. Now Watts, I want—and I must have—incontestable proof of the psychic's abnormal power—nothing else can save her from State prison. Do you realize that?"
"We do."
"Very well, proceed."
"What would you call incontestable proof?"
"I should say a registered pressure on the key or the lighting of the lamp above the cabinet—"
A vivid red flash lit up the room. Stinchfield shouted, "The lamp—the lamp was lit!"
His excitement, to all but Bartol, was ludicrously high, and Mrs. Joyce openly chuckled. "What else do you want done, Mr. Science?"
"Writing independent of Mrs. Ollnee," replied Bartol.
After a long and painful silence the bell tinkled faintly, and as all listened breathlessly the zither began to play.
"Now who is doing that?" asked the engineer.
"Turn on the green light!" suggested the Voice.
Stinchfield lit the green lamp, and by its glow the psychic was seen in her cage reclining limply, her face ghostly white in the light. Bartol looked about the circle. Every hand was in view, and yet the zither continued to play its weird and wistful little tune. Leo and Mrs. Joyce took this as a matter of course, but the men sat in rigid amazement.
"Lights out!" whispered the Voice.
Stinchfield put out his lamp. "That is astounding," he said. "I cannot analyze that."
"Will you swear the psychic did not do it?" asked the Voice.
The engineer hesitated. "Yes," he finally said.
"Is this sufficient?" asked the unseen.
Bartol replied. "Sufficient for my argument; but I do not understand these physical effects, and the jury may demand other proof. It will be necessary for us to show that the messages which misled, as well as those which comforted, came from some power outside the psychic and beyond her control. I believe that, as in the case of Anna Rothe—condemned by a German court to a long term of imprisonment—the charge of imposture and swindling made against Mrs. Ollnee must lie, unless I can demonstrate that these messages come from her subconscious self in some occult way, or from personalities other than herself. In fact, the whole case against Mrs. Ollnee lies in the question—does she believe in The Voices as entities existing and acting outside herself—"
He interrupted himself to say: "Something is tapping my hand. It feels like the small tin horn."
"It is!" came the answer in such volume that it could be heard all over the room.
"Does this not prove the medium innocent of ventriloquism?"
"Stinchfield—what about this?" asked Bartol.
The engineer could only repeat: "I don't understand it. It is out of my range."
Again the red lamp above the cabinet flashed, and by its momentary glow the horn was seen floating high over the cage, in which the medium sat motionless and ghastly white.
"Shall I flashlight that?" asked Stinchfield again.
"No," answered the Voice. "The flashlight is very dangerous. We must use it only for the supreme thing. Be patient!"
There was no longer any spirit of jocularity in the room. Each one acknowledged the presence of something profoundly mysterious, something capable of transforming physical science from top to bottom, something so far-reaching in its effect on law and morals as to benumb the faculties of those who perceived it. It was in no sense a religious awe with Bartol; it was the humbleness which comes to the greatest minds as they confront the unknowable deeps of matter and of space.
The boy and girl forgot their names, their sex. They touched hands as two infinitely small insects might do in the impenetrable night of their world (their hates as unimportant as their loves). Only the bereaved wife and mother leaned forward with the believer's full faith in the heaven from which the beloved forms of her dead were about to issue.
Suddenly the curtains of the alcove opened, disclosing a narrow strip of some glowing white substance. It was not metal, and it was not drapery. It was something not classified in science, and Stinchfield stared at it with analytic eyes, talking under breath to Bartol. "It is not phosphorus, but like it. I wonder if it emits heat?"
Mrs. Joyce explained: "It is the half-opened door into the celestial plane. I saw a face looking out."
This light vanished as silently as it came, and the zither began to play again, and a multitude of fairy voices—like a splendid chorus heard far down a shining hall—sang exquisitely but sadly an unknown anthem. While still the men of law and science listened in stupefaction the voices died out, and the zither, still playing, rose in the air, and at the instant when it was sounding nearest the ceiling the red lamp above the cabinet was again lighted, and the instrument, played by two faintly perceived hands, continued floating in the air.
Silent, open-mouthed, staring, Stinchfield heard the zither descend to the table before him. Then he awoke. "I must photographthat!"
"Not yet," insisted the Voice. "Wait for a more important sign."
In Victor's mind a complete revulsion to faith had come. His heart went out in a rush of remorseful tenderness and awe. The last lingering doubt of his mother disappeared. Like a flash of lightning memory swept back over his past. All he had seen and heard of the "ghost-room" stood revealed in a pure white light. "It was all true—all of it. She has never deceived me or any one else; she is wonderful and pure as an angel!" Incredible as were the effects he had seen, and which he had rejected as unconscious trickery, not one of them was more destructive of the teaching of his books than this vision of the zither played high in the air by sad, sweet hands. He longed to clasp his mother to his bosom to ask her forgiveness, but his throat choked with an emotion he could not utter.
Bartol, with tense voice, said to Stinchfield: "We have succeeded in paralleling Crookes' experiment. With this alone I can save her."
The flash of radiance from the cabinet interrupted him, and a new voice—an imperative voice—called:
"Green light!"
Stinchfield turned his switch, and there in the glow of the lamp stood a tall female figure with pale, sweet, oval face and dark, mysterious eyes.
"It is Altair!" exclaimed Leo.
Victor shivered with awe and exalted admiration, for the eyes seemed to look straight at him. The room was filled with that familiar unaccountable odor, and a cold wind blew as before from the celestial visitant, with suggestions of limitless space and cold, white light.
"Be faithful," the sweet Voice said. "Do not grieve. Do your work. Good-by."
The vision lasted but an instant, but in that moment Stinchfield and Bartol both perceived the psychic in her electric prison, lying like a corpse with lolling head and ghostly, sunken cheeks. She seemed to have lost half her bulk; like a partly filled garment she draped her chair.
The engineer spoke in a voice soft, pleading, husky with excitement. "May I flashlight now?"
"Not that—but this!" uttered a man's voice, and forth from the cabinet a faintly luminous mist appeared.
"Red lamp!"
In the glow of the sixteen-candle-power light the face of a bearded man was plainly seen. It wore a look of grave expectancy.
"Shall I fire?" asked Stinchfield.
"It may destroy our instrument," answered the figure. "But proceed."
The blinding flash which followed was accompanied by a cry, followed by a moan, and Lucy Ollnee was heard to topple from her chair to the floor. In the moment of horrified silence which followed the Voice commanded:
"Be silent! Do not stir! Turn off your current."
In his excitement Stinchfield turned off both light and current, and left the whole room in darkness. Victor was on his feet crying out: "She has fallen! She is dying!"
"Stay where you are, my son. Keep the room dark. We will take care of your mother."
So absolute was his faith at the moment, Victor resumed his seat, though he was trembling with fear. Leo reached for his hand. "Don't be frightened. They will care for her."
"We have witnessed the miraculous," declared Bartol, stricken into irresolution by what had taken place.
Mrs. Joyce, accustomed to these marvels, added her word of warning. "Don't go to her yet. Spirits are all about her. It has been a terrible shock, but they will heal her."
Stunned silent, baffled by what he had seen, the scientist sat with his hand on the switches controlling the lights ready to carry out the orders of his invisible colleague.
"Red light!" commanded the Voice. "Approach—quietly. Victor, take charge of your mother's body. She will not re-enter it. Her spirit is with us."
Victor went forward and knelt in agony while the engineer lifted the cage and delivered the unconscious psychic into his hands.
Lucy Ollnee breathed no more. She had died as she had lived, a martyr to the unseen world.
But her death was triumphant, for on the sensitive plate of each camera science and law were able to read the proof of her power. In the dark face of his grandsire Victor read a stern contempt as though he said:
"Deny and still deny. In the end youmustbelieve."
In the alcove on the pad these words were written in his mother's hand: "Do not grieve. My work is done. I do not go far. I shall be near to cheer and guide you. Your future is secure. Work hard, be patient, and all will be well. Farewell, but not good-by."
Below, written in the quaint script which Victor recognized, were these words: "Men of science and of law, blazon forth the marvels you have seen and tested. Make the world ring with them; in such wise will you advance veneration for God and remove the fear of death.
"WATTS."
"WATTS."
Bartol obeyed the command of the invisible powers. He gladly blazoned the triumphant death of the psychic to the world. Lucy Ollnee became at once a glorious martyr for her faith, a victim of science. Liberal journals and religious journals alike lamented that it was necessary for the sake of proof as regards immortality "that an innocent woman should be caged and tortured to death with electric batteries," and even theStar, leader in the war against the mediums, permitted itself an editorial word of regret, and published in full Bartol's letter, and also a long interview with Stinchfield, wherein he admitted the genuineness of the dead woman's claims to supra-normal power.
But all this was, at the moment, of small comfort to Victor. For a long time he refused to believe in the reality of his mother's death, insisting that she was in deep trance (as she had been before); but at last, when the body was to be removed to Mrs. Joyce's home and Doctor Steele and Doctor Eberly had both examined it and found no signs of life, he gave up all hope of her return.
Accompanied by Mrs. Joyce, he visited the California Avenue flat for the last time to pack up the few things of value which his mother had been permitted to acquire. His attitude toward the chairs, the slates, the old table, had utterly changed. They were now instinct with his mother's power, permeated with some part of her subtler material self, and he was minded to preserve them. They were no longer the tools of a conjuror; they were the sacred relics of a priestess.
Mrs. Joyce asked permission to house them for him till he had secured a home of his own, and to this he consented, for with his present feeling concerning them he was troubled by the thought of their being stored in dark vaults among masses of commonplace furniture.
"I shall keep the table in my own room," said Mrs. Joyce. "It may be that Lucy will be able to manifest herself to me through it. I have been promised such power."
To this Victor made no reply, for while he now believed absolutely in all that his mother claimed to do, he had not been brought to a belief in the return of the dead, and it was this fundamental doubt which made his grief so bitter. "If only she could know that I believe in her," he said to Leo, on the morning of the day when his mother's body was to be taken away. "Think of it! She died a thousand times for the curious and the selfish, only to be called an impostor and a cheat—and I, her only son, was afraid the charge was true. If only I could have told her that I believed in her!"
"She knows," the girl gently assured him. They were seated at the moment in the library and the morning was very warm and silent. The birds seemed to be resting in preparation for their evensong. "Your mother is near us—she may be listening to us this minute."
"I can't believe that," he declared, sadly. "I'm not sure that I want to believe it. I can't endure the thought of my mother's destruction, and yet the notion of her floating about somewhere like a wreath of mist is sorrowful to me."
Leo confessed to somewhat the same feeling. "Heaven—any kind of heaven—has always been incomprehensible to me, and yet we must believe there is some sort of system of rewards and punishments. Anyhow, your mother's death was glorious. She died as she would have wished to die—in proving her faith."
"She gave too much," he protested. "All her life she was set apart to do a martyr's work. I understand now why my father couldn't stand it. I know how he must have resented these Voices, and I cannot blame him for going away. Would you marry a man like Stainton Moses or David Home?"
She recoiled a little before the thought. "Of course not—but—"
"What?"
"Your mother was charming. If your father really loved her—"
"He did! I'm sure of that, at first, but these 'ghosts' destroyed his home. My mother confessed to me that they tormented my father for his unbelief, and he had to go."
"They are together now, and he believes."
Victor fixed a penetrating look upon her. "Do you really believe that the dead speak to us?"
"I see no reason why they shouldn't—if they want to. How else can you explain these Voices?"
He shook his head. "I'm afraid these modern Italian scientists are right. The Voices were only 'parasitic personalities,' nothing else. But let's not talk of them. I'm tired of the 'ghost-room'—all my life I've had it—and now I'm going to forget it if I can."
"Hush! Your mother may hear you and grieve."
"If she can hear me she will understand my feeling. I like the world as it is—I don't want the supernatural thrust into it."
"I think you're wrong," she said, firmly. "The larger view is that of the scientist who recognizes nothing supernatural in the universe. I would not part with what your mother gave me for huge sums. I've had wonderful, thrilling experiences. Remember Altair!"
Altair! Yes, he remembered her, and remembering her he recalled the graceful figure at his bedside and the touch of the faintly clinging lips. That mystery remained the most inexplicable of them all.
While thus he sat, dream-filled and rapt, the girl studied him, and her face changed. "You believe in Altair. What's more, you love her, and I can't blame you for it. She is more beautiful than angels. You will not forsake the 'ghost-room' so long as you have a hope that she may return."
"You are mistaken," he protested. "Altair is only a dream. I worship her as a figure in a vision. Do you know what I think she was?" Her look questioned, and he went on. "For days I have pondered on her face and figure, in the light of modern science, and I am convinced that she was nothing but a union of my mother's astral self and you."
She looked at him in startled thought. "What do you mean?"
He explained eagerly. "You must have noticed how much like my mother she was? Her brow was the same—her eyes the same—"
"Yes, they were a little like hers."
"But her mouth and chin were exactly like yours. Her hands were like yours. She held her head exactly as you do—and then she changed; sometimes my mother predominated in her, sometimes you were the stronger."
The girl was deeply affected by the significance of this analysis. "You imagined all that."
He pushed on. "I did not, and, furthermore, Altair never came till you sat with my mother. She never attained such power—so your aunt agrees—till I came into the circle. She represented my conception of my mother and you. I loved my mother, and I admired you—and out of my love and admiration Altair was created."
"That is absurd! If ever a spirit came from heaven, Altair was that one. Why, she was palpable! I've touched her hands."
He said, slowly: "She was beautiful, I confess, so beautiful that on that first night she made even you seem coarse and material."
"I felt your disdain," she thrust in, with sudden hurt.
"But that was only for the moment. I could see nothing but her face—so sad, so wistful. But let me ask you something. Did you, the night after our walk on the drive in the moonlight—did you dream of me?"
Her lip curled in a wondering smile. "What a question to ask of me!"
"But did you? Come now, be honest. I have a reason for asking—did you?"
"What is your reason for asking?"
"That night Altair came to my bedside."
Her eyes flashed and she rose to her feet. "You have an Oriental imagination."
"Don't go—hear me out. It was a beautiful experience."
"Apparently it was. To me your story is insulting."
He lost patience a little, and said bluntly: "You act as if I chargedyouwith something. I say, 'Altair' came, and to me her visit was verysignificantand beautiful, because she testified to me that both you and my mother were thinking of me. It was, in fact, your united astral selves that paid that visit. Altair was your materialized friendship and my mother's love."
"What a fantastic notion!" she said; but she lingered, held by something new and masterful in his voice.
She added, with some humor: "Be kind enough to imagine that your mother's 'astral self' preponderated in that vision."
"I do, for when Altair stooped to kiss me—"
"Stop!" she cried out, sharply; "you go too far!"
"Leo!" he called, and his voice checked her as quickly as if he had caught her by the arm. "I am not joking; I am very serious. You must remember that I have lost both my mother and Altair—you alone remain—I can't afford to lose you. You are all I have now. Don't be angry with me."
She considered him with a return to pity. "Forgive me," she hurriedly retracted. "I am very sorry for you, and I don't want to seem unfriendly; but it is only a week since we met. What can you know of me in so short a time?"
"I loved you the moment you came into my mother's room."
"Nonsense. You hated me."
"I did not like the way you treated me; but I never hated you. I was afraid of you."
"If your mother can hear you say that, she is certainly smiling, for she knows you are not afraid of anybody. You're a very stiff-necked person."
"I know you have a right to laugh at me; but I believe our 'guides' have brought us together. I need you—now—and if I dared I'd ask you to wear this." He disclosed a ring in his hand.
She looked at it narrowly. "I know that ring; it was your mother's. She kept it in a little velvet box together with an old-fashioned locket."
"Yes, it is hers. It isn't very grand, compared with your own, but I wish you'd put it on and consider it my promissory note."
"Yourpromissory note!"
"Yes, I promise to buy it back with all the money you have lost through my mother's advice. Will you wear it for me?"
"Where do you expect to find so much money?"
"Right here, in this great city. Mr. Bartol is to take me into his office. He's like a father to me already; but I don't expect him to give me anything. I'm going to work, and I'm going to pay you back the money you have lost."
Extending her little finger, she took the ring daintily on its tip. "All that sounds very romantic; and yet young men do win wealth and fame right here—and why not you?"
"That's just it. I may be the future monopolizer of air-ships—" The maid, appearing at the moment, announced that a lady wished to see Mr. Ollnee.
"Did she give her name?"
"No, sir; but she said she was a relative, sir."
"Tell her I will see her in a moment."
As the maid left Leo rose.
"Don't go!" pleaded Victor. "My visitor can wait. You haven't said whether you will wear my ring or not. I don't know how long it may be before I can 'make good,' but it will help mightily to know that you are expecting me to do so."
She pondered, but her face was kindly and her voice very gentle as she said: "I don't want to seem unkind now in your hour of grief, but I can't wear the ring." His eyes filled with tears, and she added: "I'll keep it for you. The real question between us will have to be decided some time in the future—when we know each other better. You need not think of paying me. Go and see your relation. It may be a rich aunt come to adopt you."
"Couldn't youlearnto love me?" he asked, poignantly.
"I might." She smiled. "I like you already." And she went away, leaving him with stronger will to dare and do.
As Victor entered the library he was met by a very pale, wide-eyed young woman in a picturesque black hat. Her voice was deep and full of dramatic fervor as she said:
"You are Victor Ollnee?"
"I am."
Her eyes, large and very dark, almost black, gazed at him appealingly, as she said: "Pardon me for a little deception. I am your relation only in a spiritual sense—I share your sorrow, and in other ways I am related to you. I was eager to see you, and I did not send in my name for the reason that it would have repelled you, and you might have refused to meet me."
Victor thought her a very singular and very theatric young person. Certainly she was under some strong stress of emotion which caused her lips to quiver and her voice to vibrate tensely. He knew her now. She was the girl he had confronted in the court-room, and he stared at her, uncertain of his footing. She seemed like some of the figures he had seen on the stage, vivid, swift of change, unreal, but her voice was vibrantly charming. He was sure she was the girl he had met on the street, and she had stood beside the man Aiken during their brief appearance in the court-room.
She approached a step or two, as if throwing herself on his mercy. "My name is Florence Aiken. I am a newspaper writer. I am the one who brought all this trouble to you. It was I who wrote that first article in theStardenouncing your mother."
He recoiled before her quite as dramatically as she could have wished. "You wrote that!" he exclaimed. "I thought a man did that job."
She could not help a slight expression of pride in her work. "It was mine, every word of it. I was terribly vindictive, I admit; but you must know I had some provocation. Let me tell you? Will you listen to me? Please do! I'm not so heartless as I seemed in that article, and I cannot rest till I have made my peace with you."
Her voice, her pale face, her intense eyes, and her tense contralto voice softened his resentment.
"I'll listen, but you can't expect me to forgive a thing like that."
"May I sit?"
"Certainly," he answered, but remained standing, as if to retain his guard.
"Don't condemn me altogether," she pleaded. "Wait till you know how much reason I had to hate the whole brood of clairvoyants, seers, and psychics. My dear old grandmother was an easy mark for the cheapest of them, and I, who paid for her nurse out of my own thin little purse, and waited upon her night and day, had a right to consider her small fortune my own. It wasn't much, but it was enough to pay the cost of a flat, and to see it all going to fakers and greasy palmists—well, it was too much. It made a crusader of me—and it would have made one of you. It was not a question of your mother—alone. I went to our managing editor at last, and told him my story. I made it clear to him that the city was full of these harpies who prey on poor old women like my grandmother. 'They ought to be driven out of town,' I said. 'Cut loose,' he said; and I did. My article on your mother was honest. I believed her to be simply another one of the same sort of impostors. I took her just like three or four others whose methods I knew, and I got my cousin, Frank Aiken, to bring suit against her. I thought she was a crook. I feel differently to-day. Since talking with Judge Bartol and Mr. Stinchfield (I handled both those assignments) I've changed my estimate of her. I have written a page article vindicating her. I've come to tell you that her death in that cage has changed the situation for me. I am convinced that she was sincere, and I want to humble myself before you, her son, and ask your forgiveness. I know you feel more like killing me, but here I am—I couldn't rest without letting you know that I need your pardon."
Her plea, swift, voiced in music, and illustrated by her pale face, glowing eyes, and sensitive lips, powerfully affected him. He towered over her in savage silence for a little while, then with effort he said: "I don't see how I can do anything to you, for I felt the same way—I mean I didn't believe in my mother's business."
She became radiant. "Didn't you?"
"No. Up to the very moment when that red lamp was lit I could not believe in her. I couldn't help doubting—even now I need the photographs to bolster up my belief."
The reportorial instinct awoke in her. "I wish I might see those photographs—to reassure myself, not for publication. May I see them?"
He did not observe that her desire for his pardon seemed suddenly to be met, even though he had not yet put it in words, and his mind was wholly on the question of the photographic tests as he slowly replied:
"They are very marvelous—especially those which came on the unexposed plates."
Her eyes widened in wonder. "What do you mean?"
"Mr. Stinchfield had several packages of plates opened ready to use in his cameras, but The Voices only let him make one flashlight. It seems as if they knew the experiment would end my mother's life, and yet on each of the unexposed plates are faces and forms, some of which Mr. Bartol 'recognized.'"
"Let me see them—please!" she pleaded, earnestly. "They will comfort me, too, for I am under conviction."
He took from his pocket a package of small photographs. "Here," he said, "are the three flashlights of my grandfather, Nelson Blodgett."
The young woman almost snatched them in her eager haste. "Oh, wonderful! What a document! The medium plainly in her cage—and this figure on the same plate."
"It is the most convincing picture in existence," he said, sadly, "but it cost me my mother."
She fixed a dreamy gaze upon him. "If this is a spirit—then your mother can return to you. Has she done so?"
He moved uneasily. "I have not asked her to do that. I don't care to be controlled or guided by spirits, not even by her spirit."
"Why?"
His voice was firm and assured as he replied: "Because I want to live and work out my career like other men. I don't want to see or hear any more of the 'astral plane'—" He checked himself. "It isn't natural for a man like me to be mixed up with all this spirit business, and I'm tired of it."
"I see what you mean. You want to work and woo and marry like other men. You're right; of course you're right. What have we who are young and vigorous to do with the dead, anyway? Unless all human life is a mistake, a foolish thing, it's our business to live it humanly." She held out her hand for the other pictures. "Let me see them all, please!"
He handed them to her. "There were three cameras," he explained, "hence these duplicates. These faces are likenesses of Mr. Bartol's wife and two children—and these plates, remember, were not exposed—they are of Altair, one of the guides."
She studied the shadowy forms with keen gaze. "One of the strange things about this 'spirit photograph' business is the resemblance they all bear to pictures—I mean, they all look as if they were photographs of framed portraits or drawings."
Again he betrayed restlessness. "Mr. Stinchfield noticed that."
"What is his explanation?"
"He does not think they come from spirits at all."
She urged him to unbosom himself. "You have a conviction? What is it?"
"His theory is that they are only mental images transferred by some unknown mental power to the plates."
"What about the figure of your grandsire?"
"His theory is that the figure was really the etheric self of my mother—shaped to the form like my grandsire by her own mind."
She stared at him. "And you accept that?"
"I don't know what else to believe. Yes, I accept that. I don't believe the dead have any right to talk and fool with the lives of the living the way I've been fooled with and side-tracked." His voice was full of fervor now. "I'm going to live my own life hereafter irrespective of the dead—responsible only to the living. I will not be disciplined by ghosts."
The girl laid the photographs down softly and looked at him with frank admiration. "You're a very extraordinary young man," she said, sagely.
"No, I'm not!" he protested. "I'm just a good average. A week ago my hottest ambition was to carry the Winona ball team to victory. If I had the money and the courage I'd go back there to-morrow and finish my course."
"What do you mean by courage?"
"Well, you know what I'd be loaded up with. To go back there now would be the devil and all. Your article broke my peaceful combination just a week ago last Sunday."
"But I have undone my work. I have vindicated your mother. You have a right to be proud of her. She was as real a martyr as ever went to the stake."
"I know, but I'll be a marked figure, all the same."
"You were a marked figure before. But consider all explanations have been made—wait till you read my article. Go back!" she insisted. "I wish you would." Her voice was rich with pleading. "It would make me happy. I feel horribly guilty—really I do. I'm only a grubbing reporter-person—I've had to earn my way and keep house for my grandmother besides; but I'd gladly share my salary to help you return to college. Please go back—it will relieve my mind of a big burden."
He took her hand in the spirit in which it was offered. "I am within a few days of graduation, but—"
"Please go back—for the sake of a poor little newspaper wretch who feels that she has indirectly spoiled your career." She pressed his hand fervidly. "Promise me this and you'll take a monstrous load off my shoulders."
She had the face, the temperament of the actress, and loved to experiment on the hearts of men; but she was deeply in earnest now. Bartol and Stinchfield had really changed her point of view as regards Mrs. Ollnee, and this "situation" appealed to her at the moment with irresistible power. Life was to her a drama, intense, never-ending, romantic, and at the moment she loved this splendid young man orphaned by her hand.
He could not resist her caressing voice, her appealing eyes, her sensitive lips, and he said, "I promise."
"Thank you," she said, and, dropping his hand, she lifted burning yet tearful eyes to his face. "You are very generous."
He went on, "I am sure you meant well."
"I don't want to rest under false imputations," she repeated. "I did not mean well. That first article was savage. I was angry. I struck blindly, but I struck to hurt."
"Well, all that is ended," he replied, sadly. "My mother is to be buried to-day."
She looked at him in silence for a moment. "I have one more request to make," she said, at last, and her voice was very soft and hesitating. "I'd like to look upon her face. I want to ask her forgiveness."
His heart melted at this plea, and he turned away to hide his tears. When he could speak he said: "She is very beautiful. I cannot believe even now that she is dead; but I have given my consent to have her taken to the cemetery. I will show her to you."
In silence she followed him up the stairway and into the cool, dark room where the coffin lay.
The windows were open at the bottom, and though the shades were drawn, the chamber was filled with soft light. The cries of the barn-yard and the twitter of birds outside seemed strangely softened as the two young people so singularly brought together approached the still form of the seeress and looked into her face serene with the infinite repose of death.
Victor, with choking throat and burning eyes, stood at the bier unable to utter a sound; but the girl, after a long glance, took a rose from her bosom, and, with a sigh, gently laid it on the still, small, white hands of the silent form.
"Accept my homage," she intoned, softly, "and if you can still see and hear, pardon me and forget my bitter words."
She stood a moment thereafter as if involuntarily listening, waiting, hoping—but the dead gave no sign.