She led the way to the bedside and laid her warm, plump hands on the pale, thin, cold, and rigid fingers of her friend. She stooped and peered into the sightless visage. "Lucy, are you present? Can you see me?" Doctor Sill then said: "The eyes alone puzzle me. The pupils are not precisely--" "If there is the slightest doubt--" Mrs. Joyce began. "Oh, I didn't mean to convey that, Mrs. Joyce. I was merely giving you the exact point--" "She shall lie precisely as she is till to-morrow," announced Mrs. Joyce, firmly. "I have an 'impression' that she wishes to have it so. Will you permit this?" She confronted the two physicians. "Will you wait till to-morrow before reporting?" Doctor Eberly considered a moment. "If you insist, Mrs. Joyce, and if it is Mr. Ollnee's wish--" "Yes, yes," Victor cried, "I've heard of people being buried alive. It is too horrible to think about! Leave us alone till to-morrow." The physicians conferred apart, and at last Eberly turned to say: "It seems to us a perfectly harmless concession. We will not report the case till to-morrow. Doctor Sill will call in the morning and decide what further course to take." "Thank you," repeated Mrs. Joyce. After the doctors had gone she turned to Victor, saying: "There is nothing for us to do now but to wait. If Lucy has gone out of her body forever she will manifest to us here in some familiar way. If she intends to return she will revive the body and speak from it sometime between now and dawn." "She seems to sleep," he said; and now that his awe and terror were lessened by his hope, he was able to study her face more exactly. "How peaceful she seems--and how little she is!" "A great soul in a dainty envelope," Mrs. Joyce replied. "Would you mind taking my car and going to my home to tell Leonora where I am? I wish also you would bring Mrs. Post, my seamstress, back with you. She's a good, strong, kindly soul and will be most helpful to-day." He consented readily and went away in the car, with the bright spring sunlight flooding the world, feeling himself snared in an invisible net. All thought of leaving the city passed out of his mind. He thought only of his mother and of her possible revivification. "I will fight the world here if only she will return," he said. It seemed years since the ball game of Saturday wherein he had taken such joyous and honorable part. At that time his universe held no sorrow, no care, no uncertainty. Now here he sat, plunged deep in mystery and confusion, face to face with death, penniless, beleaguered, and alone. "What would I do without Mrs. Joyce?" he asked himself. "She is a wonderful woman." Strange that in a single hour he should come to lean upon her as upon an elder sister.