esence of a woman, that occult and
potent aura of individuality, call it personal magnetism, spiritual
effluence, or reduce it to a simpler expression if you will; whatever
it was, it had warned me of the nearness of the dread attraction which
allured at a distance and revealed itself with all the terrors of the
Lorelei if approached too recklessly. A sign from her brother caused
her to withdraw at once, but not before I had felt the impression which
betrayed itself in my change of color, anxiety about the region of the
heart, and sudden failure as if about to fall in a deadly fainting-fit.

Does all this seem strange and incredible to the reader of my
manuscript? Nothing in the history of life is so strange or exceptional
as it seems to those who have not made a long study of its mysteries.
I have never known just such a case as my own, and yet there must have
been such, and if the whole history of mankind were unfolded I cannot
doubt that there have been many like it. Let my reader suspend his
judgment until he has read the paper I have referred to, which was drawn
up by a Committee of the Royal Academy of the Biological Sciences. In
this paper the mechanism of the series of nervous derangements to which
I have been subject since the fatal shock experienced in my infancy is
explained in language not hard to understand. It will be seen that such
a change of polarity in the nervous centres is only a permanent form and
an extreme degree of an emotional disturbance, which as a temporary
and comparatively unimportant personal accident is far from being
uncommon,--is so frequent, in fact, that every one must have known
instances of it, and not a few must have had more or less serious
experiences of it in their own private history.

It must not be supposed that my imagination dealt with me as I am
now dealing with the reader. I was full of strange fancies and wild
superstitions. One of my Catholic friends gave me a silver medal which
had been blessed by the Pope, and which I was to wear next my body. I
was told that this would turn black after a time, in virtue of a power
which it possessed of drawing out original sin, or certain portions
of it, together with the evil and morbid tendencies which had been
engrafted on the corrupt nature. I wore the medal faithfully, as
directed, and watched it carefully. It became tarnished and after a time
darkened, but it wrought no change in my unnatural condition.

There was an old gyps