Accompanied by Mrs. Joyce, he visited the California Avenue flat for the last time to pack up the few things of value which his mother had been permitted to acquire. His attitude toward the chairs, the slates, the old table, had utterly changed. They were now instinct with his mother's power, permeated with some part of her subtler material self, and he was minded to preserve them. They were no longer the tools of a conjuror; they were the sacred relics of a priestess.
Mrs. Joyce asked permission to house them for him till he had secured a home of his own, and to this he consented, for with his present feeling concerning them he was troubled by the thought of their being stored in dark vaults among masses of commonplace furniture.
"I shall keep the table in my own room," said Mrs. Joyce. "It may be that Lucy will be able to manifest herself to me through it. I have been promised such power."
To this Victor made no reply, for while he now believed absolutely in all that his mother claimed to do, he had not been brought to a belief in the return of the dead, and it was this fundamental doubt which made his grief so bitter. "If only she could know that I believe in her," he said to Leo, on the morning of the day when his mother's body was to be taken away. "Think of it! She died a thousand times for the curious and the selfish, only to be called an impostor and a cheat--and I, her only son, was afraid the charge was true. If only I could have told her that I believed in her!"
"She knows," the girl gently assured him. They were seated at the moment in the library and the morning was very warm and silent. The birds seemed to be resting in preparation for their evensong. "Your mother is near us--she may be listening to us this minute."
"I can't believe that," he declared, sadly. "I'm not sure that I want to believe it. I can't endure the thought of my mother's destruction, and yet the notion of her floating about somewhere like a wreath of mist is sorrowful to me."
Leo confessed to somewhat the same feeling. "Heaven--any kind of heaven--has always been incomprehensible to me, and yet we must believe there is some sort of system of rewards and punishments. Anyhow, your mother's death was glorious. She died as she would have wished to die--in proving her faith."