"And I wrote so seldom," he groaned. "I was so busy with my games, my studies, I hardly thought of her. If she will only come back to me I will give up everything for her."
"She understood you, Victor. She was a wonderful little woman, lovely in her serene, high thought. She lived on a lofty plane."
"I begin to see that," he answered, contritely. "I understand her better now."
The kindly Mrs. Bowers had slipped away back to her household below, and the men of science were still deep in a low-toned, deliberate discussion, so that Victor and the woman he now knew to be his best friend were left to confront each other in mutual study. He was wondering at her interest in him, and she was weighing his grief and remorse, thinking enviously of his youth and bodily perfection. "I wish you were my son," she uttered, wistfully.
Doctor Eberly again approached, walking in that quaint, sidewise fashion which had made him the subject of jocose remark among his pupils at the medical school.
Mrs. Joyce was instant in inquiry. "How is she, Doctor?"
"Life is extinct," he replied, with fateful precision.
"Are you sure?" she demanded.
"Reasonably so. One is never sure of anything that concerns the human organism," he replied, wearily.
She warned him: "You must remember she was accustomed to these trances."