Mrs. Joyce took a seat directly opposite the little psychic, Wood sat at her left, while Victor, with Leo at his right, completed the little crescent. Mrs. Ollnee, with her small, battered table before her, faced them across its top. Victor made no objection to this arrangement, but kept an alert eye on every movement. He watched her closely. She first breathed into one of the horns and put it beside her, then held one of the slates between her palms for a little time. "I hope this will be illuminated to-night," she said. This remark gave Victor a twinge of disgust and bewildered pain. "She is too little and sweet and fine to be the high priest of such jugglery," he thought, but did not cease his watchful attention, even for an instant. The locking of the door, the turning out of the light and the taking hands in the good old traditional way all irritated and well-nigh estranged him. Why should his life be thrown into the midst of such cheap and ill-odored drama? "This shall never happen again," he vowed, beneath his breath. There was not much talk during the first half-hour, for the reason that Victor was too self-accusing to talk, and the others were too solemn and too eager for results to enter upon general conversation. For the most part, they spoke in low voices and waited and listened. The first indication of anything unusual, aside from the tapping, was a breeze, a deathly cold wind, which began to blow faintly over the table from his mother, bearing a peculiar perfume (an odor like that from some Oriental rug), which grew in power till each of the sitters remarked upon it. This current of air continued so long and so uninterruptedly that Victor began to wonder. Could it be his mother's breath? If she were not fraudulently producing it, then it must be that some window had been opened. The network of her deceit--if it was deceit--thickened. Mrs. Joyce then said, in a low voice: "We are to have celestial visitors to-night. That is the wind which accompanies the astral forms." "Yes," said Leo, "and that perfume always accompanies Altair. Are we to see Altair?" she softly asked. A sibilant whisper replied, "_Yes, soon._" A moment later, another and distinctly different voice called softly, "_My son._" "Who is it?" asked Victor. "_Your father._" "What have you to say to me?" "_The power of the mind is limitless_," the whispered voice replied. "_Matter, the strongest steel, is but a form of motion._" "What is all that to me?" asked Victor. "_As you think so you will be. Be strong and constant._" The vagueness of all this increased Victor's irritation. "What about Pettus?" The voice hesitated, weakened a little. "_I can't tell--not now--I will ask._"