April 11. I hardly slept last night, and found myself in the morning so unstrung and feverish that I was compelled to ask Pratt-Haldane to do my lecture for me. It is the first that I have ever missed. I rose at mid-day, but my head is aching, my hands quivering, and my nerves in a pitiable state.
Who should come round this evening but Wilson. He has just come back from London, where he has lectured, read papers, convened meetings, exposed a medium, conducted a series of experiments on thought transference, entertained Professor Richet of Paris, spent hours gazing into a crystal, and obtained some evidence as to the passage of matter through matter. All this he poured into my ears in a single gust.
‘But you!’ he cried at last. ‘You are not looking well. And Miss Penclosa is quite prostrated to-day. How about the experiments?’
‘I have abandoned them.’
‘Tut, tut! Why?’
‘The subject seems to me to be a dangerous one.’
Out came his big brown note-book.
‘This is of great interest,’ said he. ‘What are your grounds for saying that it is a dangerous one? Please give your facts in chronological order, with approximate dates and names of reliable witnesses with their permanent addresses.’
‘First of all,’ I asked, ‘would you tell me whether you have collected any cases where the mesmerist has gained a command over the subject and has used it for evil purposes?’
‘Dozens!’ he cried exultantly. ‘Crime by suggestion – ’
‘I don’t mean suggestion. I mean where a sudden impulse comes from a person at a distance – an uncontrollable impulse.’
‘Obsession!’ he shrieked, in an ecstasy of delight. ‘It is the rarest condition. We have eight cases, five well attested. You don’t mean to say – ’His exultation made him hardly articulate.
‘No, I don’t,’ said I. ‘Good-evening! You will excuse me, but I am not very well to-night.’ And so at last I got rid of him, still brandishing his pencil and his note-book. My troubles may be bad to hear, but at least it is better to hug them to myself than to have myself exhibited by Wilson, like a freak at a fair. He has lost sight of human beings. Every thing to him is a case and a phenomenon. I will die before I speak to him again upon the matter.
April 12. Yesterday was a blessed day of quiet, and I enjoyed an uneventful night. Wilson’s presence is a great consolation. What can the woman do now? Surely, when she has heard me say what I have said, she will conceive the same disgust for me which I have for her. She could not, no, she COULD not, desire to have a lover who had insulted her so. No, I believe I am free from her love – but how about her hate? Might she not use these powers of hers for revenge? Tut! why should I frighten myself over shadows? She will forget about me, and I shall forget about her, and all will be well.
