told him by one of his friends, a
story which the friend himself heard from the lips of the distinguished
actor, the late Mr. Fechter. The actor maintained that Rachel had no
genius as an actress. It was all Samson's training and study, according
to him, which explained the secret of her wonderful effectiveness on the
stage. But magnetism, he said,--magnetism, she was full of. He declared
that he was made aware of her presence on the stage, when he could not
see her or know of her presence otherwise, by this magnetic emanation.
The doctor took the story for what it was worth. There might very
probably be exaggeration, perhaps high imaginative coloring about it,
but it was not a whit more unlikely than the cat-stories, accepted as
authentic. He continued this train of thought into further developments.
Into this series of reflections we will try to follow him.

What is the meaning of the halo with which artists have surrounded the
heads of their pictured saints, of the aureoles which wraps them like
a luminous cloud? Is it not a recognition of the fact that these holy
personages diffuse their personality in the form of a visible emanation,
which reminds us of Milton's definition of light:

"Bright effluence of bright essence increate"?

The common use of the term influence would seem to imply the existence
of its correlative, effluence. There is no good reason that I can see,
the doctor said to himself, why among the forces which work upon the
nervous centres there should not be one which acts at various distances
from its source. It may not be visible like the "glory" of the painters,
it may not be appreciable by any one of the five senses, and yet it may
be felt by the person reached by it as much as if it were a palpable
presence,--more powerfully, perhaps, from the mystery which belongs to
its mode of action.

Why should not Maurice have been rendered restless and anxious by the
unseen nearness of a young woman who was in the next room to him, just
as the persons who have the dread of cats are made conscious of their
presence through some unknown channel? Is it anything strange that the
larger and more powerful organism should diffuse a consciousness of its
presence to some distance as well as the slighter and feebler one? Is
it strange that this mysterious influence or effluence should belong
especially or exclusively to the period of complete womanhood in
distinction from that of immaturity or decadence? On t