Sweet as this voice was, it irritated him, for he could not disassociate his mother from it. Indeed, it had something subtly familiar in its utterance, and yet he could not accuse her of deceit. He only roughly said: "Don't do that! I don't like that!" Silence followed, and then his mother sadly said: "You have hurt her. She will not speak again." "Let her show herself. How do I know who is speaking to me? Let me see her face again." He added this in a gentler voice, being moved by a vivid memory of the exquisite picture Altair had made. After another pause Mrs. Ollnee answered: "She will do so. She says soon. She has gone; but your father wants to speak to you." Victor rose impatiently. "Tell him to come again some other time. I'm sleepy now." She turned away saddened by his manner, and with a gentle "good-night" went softly from the room. Victor regretted his bluntness, but could not free himself from a feeling that his mother's Voices were deceptive or imaginary, and her visit hurt and disgusted him so deeply that the charm of his evening's companionship with Leo was all but lost. "Part of her phenomena are real, but these Voices--" He broke off and went to his bed with a vague feeling of loss weighing him down. For a half-hour he lay in growing bitterness, and then quite suddenly he thought he detected a thin, blue vapor rising from the rag rug at the side of his bed, and for an instant he was startled. "Is it smoke? Or do I imagine it?" As it rose and sank, expanded and contracted, he studied it closely. It was not smoke, for it did not ascend. It was more like filmy drapery tossed by a wind from a hidden aperture in the floor. Motionless, amazed, and awed, he watched it, till out of it the face of a woman looked, her wistful eyes touched with an accusing sorrow. It was Altair, and her form became more real from moment to moment, until at last he could detect the swell of her bosom, draped with the folds of a shimmering white robe. As he waited a hand appeared at her side, vaguely outlined, yet alive. He could see the fingers loosely clasped about a rose. She was so beautiful that he lay gazing at her in speechless wonder. "Am I dreaming?" he asked himself. "I _must_ be dreaming." And yet he could feel the air from the window. In the light of her glance he forgot all his other loves and cares. His worship for her returned like swift hunger, and he yearned to touch her, to hear her voice. "She is a dream," he decided, and his hand, lifted to test the vision, fell back upon the coverlet. As if reading his thought, Altair put out her right arm and touched his wrist with a caress like the stroke of a beam of moonlight, so light and cold it was. "_Victor_," she seemed to say, and his whisper was almost as light as her own. "Who are you?" "_Don't you know me? I am Altair. Do not forget me._" "I will not forget you," he answered. "I can't forget you. Why do you look so sad?"