"You know that I would, Austin."

Agatha opened her eyes.

I took the decanter and poured it over the roots of a palm in the window. No, it is useless. "There is no use talking," said I. As in a dream, too, I have the impression of the double line of gas-lamps, and my bespattered boots tell me that I must have run down the middle of the road. Though he put me down as a madman, I must tell him all. We think that the summer vac. I had finished breakfast, and was looking over some diagrams with which my lecture is to be illustrated, when my housekeeper entered to tell me that Agatha was in my study and wished to see me immediately. I KNOW that the mesmeric trance is true; I KNOW that mesmeric suggestion is true; I KNOW that I am myself sensitive to this force. I only know that as I worked in my study I became more and more uneasy.

"It merely feels lethargic."

And I must tell them of it. "Professor Gilroy is not satisfied," said she, glancing up at me with her strange little eyes. Is it conceivable that he could be jealous at my having superseded him? 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.

So it is from that point that she now attacks me. Young, fairly wealthy, in the front rank of my profession, engaged to a beautiful and charming girl- have I not every thing which a man could ask for? I had no weapon, but I never paused for that. The eating of our own words is the greatest sacrifice which truth ever requires of us. "This is very sudden, Agatha." And she has acquired that power over me. I wish that I were dead! The girl whisked round and came straight toward us, with an enquiring look upon her face, as if some one had called her. But now, when Agatha-my innocent Agatha-was endangered, my duty lay before me like a turnpike road. I recognized it as one which I kept for chemical testing in my chambers. She can project herself into my body and take command of it. As long as the creature threatened my own prospects and my honor there might be a question as to what I should do.

"Why, where else should I find myself?"

"It is, as you say, a terrible power," she answered gravely, "and the more you know of it the more terrible will it seem to you."

"But I was hoping-"

If this creature had a hand on each of us, what might she not do? The force soon became too overmastering for that. (Sphygmographic chart taken by Professor Wilson.

"Tut, tut! Why?"

The only knowledge of crime which we ever have is when a rowdy undergraduate breaks a few lamps or comes to blows with a policeman. A departure from pure reason affects me like an evil smell or a musical discord. I simply stood with the smouldering cigarette in my hand, and gazed at her. That was evident. "I had no direct influence upon Miss Marden when she came round to you. I was not even thinking of her that morning. What I did was to set her mind as I might set the alarum of a clock so that at the hour named it would go off of its own accord. If six months instead of twelve hours had been suggested, it would have been the same." She met me in the High Street yesterday evening and spoke to me. I shall see her this very day, and she shall learn what she has to expect from me. Yes, this is the other turn of the screw. "How stern you look, Austin! I have never seen your face like that. You are angry?" Here I am gravely retailing the gossip of a woman who tells me how her soul may be projected from her body, and how, while she lies in a lethargy, she can control the actions of people at a distance. And, besides, what would I myself have said a short month ago if one of my colleagues had come to me with a story of demonic possession? At the thought of what I might have done my worn nerves broke down, and I sat shivering and twitching, the pitiable wreck of a man. I sat by his bed and went over all my troubles from the beginning.

March 31. Mesmerized by Miss P.

Oh, that devilish woman! She had made a public imbecile of me. I think I hear his step in the street now, and I will go down and let him in. Charles Sadler and I went together, but I have come away before him. I associated the idea with Miss Penclosa's note. At four o'clock I should have smiled had any one told me that I should go to Miss Penclosa's to-night, and yet, at eight, I was at Wilson's door as usual. Did she not herself warn me? "Well, Professor Gilroy-or is it Mr. Gilroy?" said she, with that bitter smile of hers.