Should he go away, out West, or to some distant place and start life anew, under an assumed name, and leave his father to his delusion? Was that his duty?
He was not necessary to his parents, either as a help to their support or as a comfort to their hearts.
He did not do them the injustice to think that they had never mourned for him, or that they had not missed him in the home. All this was fully and beautifully set forth in the book.
But they had been compensated by the comfort and enjoyment afforded them by their séances, and by the messages they continually received from him!
And he could see no way, try as he would, that he could inform them of his return without causing them dismay and distress.
For if they knew him to be alive he must take again his old place in the home—and then what would his father be?
A laughing-stock, a crushed and crestfallen victim of the most despicable sort of fraud!
It would never do. He couldn't bring positive trouble into his father's life on the off chance of removing a sorrow, which, though real, was softened and solaced by the very fraud that he would expose.
No; the more he thought the more he saw his duty was to eliminate himself for all time from his home and friends.
And Carly?