Bartol turned to Mrs. Ollnee. "Are you prepared now—to-night?" he asked.
"Yes, this moment," she answered.
Mrs. Joyce exulted. "The power is on her. I can see that. See how her hand trembles! One finger is signaling. Don't you see it?"
Mr. Bartol rose. "Come with me into my study. Mrs. Joyce may come some other time. I do not want any witnesses to-night," he added, with a smile.
Victor watched his mother go into Bartol's study with something of the feeling he might have had in seeing her enter the den of a lion. She seemed very helpless and very inexperienced in contrast with this great inquisitor, so skilled in cross-examination, so inexorable in logic, so menacing of eye.
Leo, perceiving Victor's anxiety, proposed that they return to the porch, and to this he acceded, though it seemed like a cowardly desertion of his mother. "Poor little mother," he said. "If she stands up against him she's a wonder."
The girl stretched herself out on the swinging couch, and the youth took his seat on a wicker chair close beside her. Mrs. Joyce kept at a decent distance, so that if the young people had anything private to say she might reasonably appear not to have overheard it.
Talk was spasmodic, for neither of them could forget for a moment the duel which was surely going on in that inner room. Indeed, Mrs. Joyce openly spoke of it. "If Lucy is not too anxious, too eager, she will change Alexander's whole conception of the universe this night."
"Of course you're exaggerating, Aunt Louise; but I certainly expect her to shake him up."
"It only needs one genuine phenomenon to convince him of her sincerity. What a warrior for the cause he would make! She must stay right here in his house till she utterly overwhelms him. He took up her case at first merely because I asked him to do so; but he likes her, and is ready to take it up on her own account if he finds her sincere. But I want him to believe in the philosophy she represents."