"You did a great deal for her, my dear boy. It was a great joy and comfort to her to see you growing into manhood. She was a little afraid of you, but she worshiped you all the same. Your letters were an ecstasy to her."
"And I wrote so seldom," he groaned. "I was so busy with my games, my studies, I hardly thought of her. If she will only come back to me I will give up everything for her."
"She understood you, Victor. She was a wonderful little woman, lovely in her serene, high thought. She lived on a lofty plane."
"I begin to see that," he answered, contritely. "I understand her better now."
The kindly Mrs. Bowers had slipped away back to her household below, and the men of science were still deep in a low-toned, deliberate discussion, so that Victor and the woman he now knew to be his best friend were left to confront each other in mutual study. He was wondering at her interest in him, and she was weighing his grief and remorse, thinking enviously of his youth and bodily perfection. "I wish you were my son," she uttered, wistfully.
Doctor Eberly again approached, walking in that quaint, sidewise fashion which had made him the subject of jocose remark among his pupils at the medical school.
Mrs. Joyce was instant in inquiry. "How is she, Doctor?"
"Life is extinct," he replied, with fateful precision.
"Reasonably so. One is never sure of anything that concerns the human organism," he replied, wearily.
She warned him: "You must remember she was accustomed to these trances."
"So I understand. Nevertheless, this is something more than trance. So far as I can determine, this body is without a tenant."
"The tenant may come back," she insisted.
He looked away. "I know your faith, but I am quite sure all is over. _Rigor mortis_ has set in."
She rose emphatically. "I have a feeling that you are both mistaken. Let me see her. Come, Victor, why do you shrink? It is but her garment lying there."
She led the way to the bedside and laid her warm, plump hands on the pale, thin, cold, and rigid fingers of her friend. She stooped and peered into the sightless visage. "Lucy, are you present? Can you see me?"
Doctor Sill then said: "The eyes alone puzzle me. The pupils are not precisely--"
"If there is the slightest doubt--" Mrs. Joyce began.