no one is obliged to come to her. We sit of our own choice, and if we are not pleased we can refuse to pay, and we need not return. So you see it is a free contract, after all."
Her reasoning staggered Victor. He was confused also by her frank and charming manner. He perceived that his problem was not so simple as he had imagined. Hitherto, his life had been single-hearted, with nothing more difficult to decide than a question of moral philosophy; but here, now, he stood confronted by an entirely baffling entanglement of human wills. This woman, so evidently of the higher world of wealth and culture, accepted his mother's claims, and this profoundly impressed him.
Mrs. Joyce continued. "Don't take this newspaper attack too seriously, Mr. Ollnee. It was meant to be nasty, and it is nasty; but it is not fatal. It is a cloud that will soon blow over and leave you and your mother unharmed."
"It will never blow over for me," he replied, passionately, "and you must not include me in this thing. I've lived a long way from it thus far, and I don't intend to mix up with this kind of hokus-pokus."
"Victor," called his mother, warningly.
He corrected himself. "Of course I don't accuse you of wilfully deceiving anybody. I'm willing to grant that you think these Voices are real; but my teacher, Doctor Boyden, says that mediumship is only a kind of hysteria – "
Mrs. Joyce laughed. "Yes, I've read Doctor Boyden's books. What does he know about it? Did he ever study a wonderful psychic like your mother? Has he candidly examined these phenomena? Never in his life! I know all about that kind of investigator. He is basing his conclusions on somebody's else's conjectures or prejudices."
Victor defended his master. "He has tried to experiment. He's offered prizes for mediums to meet him, but they have refused. Not one would sit with him."
"Why should they? Would you have your mother seek him out to convince him? Why doesn't he come to her. There he sits in his chair, pretending to say that these phenomena are impossible, whereas I know, from many personal tests, that these voices are not merely real, but that they come from my dear ones on the other side and that they sustain and comfort me."
Victor was silenced, and his discomfiture was made the more complete by the smiling gaze of the young girl, who was evidently enjoying his perplexity. Nevertheless, though he did not continue the argument, he held to his opinion that they were all victims of his mother's unconscious necromancy.
Mrs. Joyce continued. "You say you know nothing about it. Why not find out something about it? Here is your mother. Study her."
"Why don't we have a sitting now?" exclaimed Miss Wood. "It would be fun to see his face when the horns began to dance about."
Mrs. Ollnee looked a little worried. "Not now, Leo, I'm too upset. It's been a terrible day for me. I haven't eaten a thing."
Mrs. Joyce rose. "You poor dear! Let's go get something. Come this instant. You'll go, Mr. Ollnee."
His first impulse was to refuse, but as he studied his mother's pale face and thought of the good effect of the outside air he relented. "Yes, I'll go," he replied, ungraciously.
Miss Wood came over to him and tried to soften his mood. "I know how you feel about all this, and I know how brutal a scientific sharp can be. My professors were all against it. Just the same, it's a wonderful old world; a good deal more wonderful than some of our teachers admit."
He did not reply to this, but stood watching his mother as she put on her hat and wrap. Her whole expression had changed. Her face had lighted up and her delicacy of feature and small, graceful hands denoted to him as never before the woman of natural refinement and intelligence. It was hard to consider her at the moment the victim of a brain disorder, and yet —
Mrs. Joyce led the way down the creaking stairs, and Victor, following in sullen silence, was surprised and a little daunted to find a luxurious automobile waiting for them. He rebelled at the curb. "You go on without me," he said, harshly. "I'll stay here till you come back."
"Oh no," exclaimed Mrs. Joyce. "Please come with us. Your mother will not be happy without you."
Miss Wood remarked, humorously, "Never refuse a dinner or a ride in a motor-car; that's my motto."
His mother timidly lifted her face. "Victor, Mrs. Joyce is my most loyal friend. I owe her more than you know. I wish you would come."
He yielded with a sense of stepping down, but as he found himself seated beside Miss Wood and whirring swiftly up the street his inflexible attitude softened. "For this one night I will follow; after that I lead," he promised himself.
The girl mocked him with subtle intonation. "I am glad of any mystery and romance which remains in this old world, and I never quarrel with fate. If any one is disposed to exchange an autocar ride for so intangible a thing as a voice, I trade."
A little later she reverted to his problem. "What right have you to pass judgment on your mother without examining her? I was just as skeptical as you are when I met her first, but she forced me to believe. I am perfectly certain that she would upset Doctor Boyden. If he would come down quietly and sit with her she'd convince even him. She is a very dear little woman, and we all love her."
Mrs. Joyce leaned over and spoke in his ear. "It is only through devoted beings like your mother that the bereaved are assured of life everlasting. She doesn't tell me that my son is living beyond the veil; she brings him to me. I hear his voice and touch his hand."
To this sort of thing he was forced to listen during their course down the shining avenue, and it made the whole city as unreal as a dream. When they rolled up to the wide portals of a towering hotel a new anxiety presented itself. "Suppose mother should be recognized as we enter? Suppose they arrest her here."
A realization of his own poverty and youth and general helplessness came over him with crushing effect as he trod the hall, which seemed very vast and splendid in his eyes. He was subdued, too, by the thought that he had not silver enough in his pocket to fee the girl who took their wraps. His resolution to fight, to earn not only his own living but to rescue his mother, became fainter each moment. "Can it be that yesterday I was behind the bat?" he asked himself. "Surely I must be dreaming."
He perceived another side to his mother's character. She seemed quite at ease amid all this splendor, and accepted whatever Mrs. Joyce did for her as something quite definitely her due.
There was no indication of the Sabbath in the gorgeous dining-room, and nothing to show that sorrow or poverty existed in the world; and seeing his mother's face flushed with pleasure, the perplexed youth relented a little further. "This one night she may have, but it must be the last of such entertainment on such terms."
There was in him beneath all this antagonism a kind of dignity and manly strength which pleased Mrs. Joyce. She was glad to see him lighten up, and she exerted herself to that end. "There now," she said, looking about the room. "Let's forget all of our troubles. Let us suppose that all our friends 'on the other side' are at dinner also."
Victor sat in silence what time his mother decided whether she would have asparagus soup or consommé. It was his first experience with that degree of wealth which takes no thought of price, and glancing at the figures on the bill of fare his hair rose. Never in his life had he eaten a meal which cost as much as this one order of soup, and the fact that his mother gaily ordered the best indicated to him how deeply indebted she already was to her patroness. "There must be some very definite need which she supplies," he conceded, "or Mrs. Joyce would not so gladly pay her bills."
At the same time his respect and admiration for his mother
