“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 under your influence—­you might easily make me believe that you were not yourself, but another woman—­for the rest of my life.”

They stood looking at each other in silence during several seconds.  Then Unorna seemed to understand what he meant.

“Do you really believe that is possible?” she asked earnestly.

“I know it.  I know of a case in which it succeeded very well.”

“Perhaps,” she said, thoughtfully.  “Let us go and look at him.”

She moved in the direction of the aged sleeper’s room and they both left the hall together.

CHAPTER XIII

Unorna was superstitious, as Keyork Arabian had once told her.  She did not thoroughly understand herself and she had very little real comprehension of the method by which she produced such remarkable results.  She was gifted with a sensitive and active imagination, which supplied her with semi-mystic formulae of thought and speech in place of reasoned explanations, and she undoubtedly attributed much of her own power to supernatural influences.  In this respect, at least, she was no farther advanced than the witches of older days, and if her inmost convictions took a shape which would have seemed incomprehensible to those predecessors of hers, this was to be attributed in part to the innate superiority of her nature, and partly, also, to the high degree of cultivation in which her mental faculties had reached development.