"What have you to say to me?"
"The power of the mind is limitless," the whispered voice replied. "Matter, the strongest steel, is but a form of motion."
"What is all that to me?" asked Victor.
"As you think so you will be. Be strong and constant."
The vagueness of all this increased Victor's irritation. "What about Pettus?"
The voice hesitated, weakened a little. "I can't tell—not now—I will ask."
What followed did not come clearly and consecutively to Victor, for Mrs. Joyce (who was expert in hearing and reporting the whispers) repeated each sentence or the substance of it to him. But he himself heard a considerable part of it. In the very midst of a sentence the voice stopped. It was as if a wire had been cut, or the receiver hung up; the silence was like death itself.
Victor called out to his mother: "Can you hear The Voices, mother? They seem to come from where you are."
She did not reply, and Mrs. Joyce explained. "She is gone."
Again the cold breeze set in, with a strong, steady swell, and with it was borne a low, humming note, which grew in volume and depth till it resembled the roaring rush of a November blast through the branches of an oak. It became awesome at last, with its majesty of moaning song, and saddening with its somber suggestion of autumn and of death. It opened the shabby little room upon an empty and limitless space, upon an infinite and vacant and obscure desert wherein night and storms contended. It died away at last, leaving the air chill and pulseless, and the chamber darker than before.