She laughed. "That's very clever of you, and very decent. Stay with your germs, rob us of our diseases, but leave us, oh, leave us our delicious _thrills_!" She became grave. "The fact is, Morton, we all have moments when we feel the presence of the dead. I do. Father and mother never seem away off in our Graceland vault; sometimes they seem to be in the room with me. It's all a fancy, you'll say, and very foolish, but I believe mother actually comes to help me with Georgie when he is ill. Sometimes in the deep of the night I thrill as if she touched me." He was not unsympathetic as he said: "You never hinted at this before." "I was afraid to do so. If mother exists somewhere, and in some etherealized form, why can't she come back? Why couldn't her mind act on mine and produce the sensation of her presence?" "Perhaps it could. Only there is no proof of its ever happening." "Now see here, Morton, so long as we are on this subject at last, I want to ask you, do you believe mother is gone--absolutely blotted out of existence?" She waited in tense silence, and as they passed a street-lamp, and the light fell on his face, he seemed to have grown suddenly pale. "Do you believe Darwin and Spencer and Victor Hugo have gone to nothingness?" "No, at the bottom of my heart I can't think that, and yet theoretically I cannot conceive of the existence of any soul apart from the body. Think of it! If mother lives, so do all the billions of cannibals, negroes, Bushmen--you can't draw a line and say 'here begins the immortal souls.'" "That isn't the question. I do not believe that father and mother and Hayward have vanished into a handful of dust, I cling to a belief in their living selves, not because the bishop and the prayer-books say so, but just because my own mind says so. I won't surrender them, that's all." "And yet a faith springing from such a desire is not well based. I want to tell you about some people I met last summer. They will interest you." Thereupon he pictured his first meeting with Viola. He described the mother and Clarke. He told of his interview with Britt and of Randall's revelations concerning Viola's life. "And now they have convinced the girl that she should extend her sphere of influence and bring her chicanery to bear on the metropolis." "How do you know it is chicanery?" "Britt said--" "I don't care what Britt said. You found the mother sweet, and you admit the girl is charming. I'll trust your instinct in such matters, Mort; you've never been one to run after frumps and minxes. She had good eyes?" "Beautiful eyes, steady, blue-gray, wistful. She quite enchanted me at first--" "And you're sentimental over her still?" "I didn't say that I was sentimental over her at any time." "I don't care what you said. I can tell by your voice that she is a lost, sweet dream. What do you want me to do?" "Nothing."