Mesmerized again in the evening.  The effect is produced more rapidly now, and the subjective visions are less marked.  I keep full notes of each sitting.  Wilson is leaving for town for a week or ten days, but we shall not interrupt the experiments, which depend for their value as much upon my sensations as on his observations.

April 4.  I must be carefully on my guard.  A complication has crept into our experiments which I had not reckoned upon.  In my eagerness for scientific facts I have been foolishly blind to the human relations between Miss Penclosa and myself.  I can write here what I would not breathe to a living soul.  The unhappy woman appears to have formed an attachment for me.

I should not say such a thing, even in the privacy of my own intimate journal, if it had not come to such a pass that it is impossible to ignore it.  For some time,—­that is, for the last week,—­there have been signs which I have brushed aside and refused to think of.  Her brightness when I come, her dejection when I go, her eagerness that I should come often, the expression of her eyes, the tone of her voice—­I tried to think that they meant nothing, and were, perhaps, only her ardent West Indian manner.  But last night, as I awoke from the mesmeric sleep, I put out my hand, unconsciously, involuntarily, and clasped hers.  When I came fully to myself, we were sitting with them locked, she looking up at me with an expectant smile.  And the horrible thing was that I felt impelled to say what she expected me to say.  What a false wretch I should have been!  How I should have loathed myself to-day had I yielded to the temptation of that moment!  But, thank God, I was strong enough to spring up and hurry from the room.  I was rude, I fear, but I could not, no, I could not, trust myself another moment.  I, a gentleman, a man of honor, engaged to one of the sweetest girls in England—­and yet in a moment of reasonless passion I nearly professed love for this woman whom I hardly know.  She is far older than myself and a cripple.  It is monstrous, odious; and yet the impulse was so strong that, had I stayed another minute in her presence, I should have committed myself.  What was it?  I have to teach others the workings of our organism, and what do I know of it myself?  Was it the sudden upcropping of some lower stratum in my nature—­a brutal primitive instinct suddenly asserting itself?  I could almost believe the tales of obsession by evil spirits, so overmastering was the feeling.

Well, the incident places me in a most unfortunate position.  On the one hand, I am very loath to abandon a series of experiments which have already gone so far, and which promise such brilliant results.  On the other, if this unhappy woman has conceived a passion for me——­ But surely even now I must have made some hideous mistake.  She, with her age and her deformity!  It is impossible.  And then she knew about Agatha.  She understood