ieving almost anything. There is nothing in all this witchcraft of
yours but a very powerful moral influence at work--I mean apart from the
mere faculty of clairvoyance which is possessed by hundreds of common
somnambulists, and which, in you, is a mere accident. The rest, this
hypnotism, this suggestion, this direction of others' wills, is a
moral affair, a matter of direct impression produced by words. Mental
suggestion may in rare cases succeed, when the person to be influenced
is himself a natural clairvoyant. But these cases are not worth taking
into consideration. Your influence is a direct one, chiefly exercised by
means of your words and through the impression of power which you
know how to convey in them. It is marvellous, I admit. But the very
definition puts me beyond your power."

"Why?"

"Because there is not a human being alive, and I do not believe that a
human being ever lived, who had the sense of independent individuality
which I have. Let a man have the very smallest doubt concerning his own
independence--let that doubt be ever so transitory and produced by any
accident whatsoever--and he is at your mercy."

"And you are sure that no accident could shake your faith in yourself?"

"My consciousness of myself, you mean. No. I am not sure. But, my dear
Unorna, I am very careful in guarding against accidents of all sorts,
for I have attempted to resuscitate a great many dead people and I have
never succeeded, and I know that a false step on a slippery staircase
may be quite as fatal as a teaspoonful of prussic acid--or an unrequited
passion. I avoid all these things and many others. If I did not, and if
you had any object in getting me under your influence, you would
succeed sooner or later. Perhaps the day is not far distant when I will
voluntarily sleep under your hand."

Unorna glanced quickly at him.

"And in that case," he added, "I am sure you could make me believe
anything you pleased."

"What are you trying to make me understand?" she asked, suspiciously,
for he had never before spoken of such a possibility.

"You look anxious and weary," he said in a tone of sympathy in which
Unorna could not detect the least false modulation, though she fancied
from his fixed gaze that he meant her to understand something which he
could not say. "You look tired," he continued, "though it is becoming
to your beauty to be pale--I always said so. I will not weary you. I was
only going to say that if I were