"Oh, do you think so!"
"Let me take your hands." Marie gave them. Leo smiled. "Cold and wet!
Yes, you are _it_! 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 role 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.