"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 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."
"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?"