He leaned toward her with intense seriousness. "How would you feel if you had suddenly learned that all your clothing, your food, your theater tickets--everything had been paid for in money drawn from strangers by means of--well--hypnotism."
"If I believed that I should feel as you do, but I don't. It is not so simple as all that. Your mother's power seems very real to me, and so far as I can now see she has given us all value received for every dollar. By rights one-half of all our profits belongs to her, or, if you prefer, to her Voices. Do you know that these Voices will not permit her to retain more than a scanty living out of all the wealth she makes for others? Did you know that?"
"I know she lives in a shabby apartment, and she tells me that she is entirely under the control of these 'guides.'"
"Yes, they refuse to let her keep anything beyond what she actually needs for herself and your education. I think all that should be counted in on her side, don't you? The fact that she is not enriching herself surely makes her part in the transaction a clean one."
He sank away from her and brooded over this thought for a minute or two before he replied. "But the whole thing is so preposterous. Have you seen her slate-writing 'stunt'?"
"Many times; but I don't think you should call it a 'stunt.'"
"Come, now, give me your honest opinion. Do you think my mother unconsciously cheats?"
She faced him with convincing candor. "No, I don't. I think she is perfectly simple and straightforward, and I believe the writing is supernormal."
"How can you believe that? You're a college girl, mother tells me. Don't the belief in these things wipe out everything you have been taught at school? It certainly rips science into strips for me, or would--if I believed it. It makes a fool of a man like Boyden, that's a sure thing."
Mrs. Joyce, looking across the room, smiled in delight at the charming picture these young people made in their animated conversation. Doubtless they were glowing over Tennyson's position in modern poetry or the question of Meredith's ultimate standing in fiction.
What the youth was really saying to the maid was this: "What did you get out of it all? What did The Voices give you?"