hought grew less agreeable and more humiliating as he dwelt upon
the possible consequences. "Will Lambert remember me? Will he take my
warning to heart?"

In imagination he followed the small envelope as it passed to the hand
of a messenger and started up that fearsome, splendid trail towards
the mill. The world was stern and cold and white and still up there in
the Basin--winter yet reigned in majesty and the pathways were deep
sunk in heaped and sculptured snows.

Up to the half-buried office the courier would ride, and with a cheery
halloo call Lambert to the door. What would he think upon receiving
such an imperative summons from a stranger? "Did I make the situation
clear? He may imagine that some dire physical disaster has overtaken
his women. But that would be true. Their peril is none the less real
because intangible, and yet my part in it may not seem either wise or
manly."

In truth every step towards his own door removed him an emotional
league from the scene in the hall, and as the throb of Viola's
agonized voice died out of his ears the crisis in her life grew
hysteric, unsubstantial, and at last unreal. Her gestures, her plea
for help, her descent of the stairway, came to seem like the climaxes
in a singular drama powerfully acted. "God! what an actress--if she
_is_ an actress!" he exclaimed, as the tragic intensity of her face
returned upon him.

He passed from this to the next phase of his development. In a certain
good-humored way he had accepted his friend Tolman's theories of
hypnotic control, but had never taken them into serious account till
this moment. He was forced now to admit the entire truth of
"suggestion" or to charge this girl, whose character so bewitched him,
with being an impostor. She was either a marvellous artist in
deception or Clarke controlled her through some sinister and
little-understood law of the mind. What else could have brought her
creeping like a somnambulist down the stairway to demonstrate her
tormentor's demoniacal sovereignty? And if he could call her to him in
such wise, then all the weird tales of the romancers, all the
half-mythical doings of Mesmer and Charcot, were true, and the feet of
Bulwer Lytton's remorseless lover solidly set upon the rock of fact.

"My school of thought is very exact and very dogmatic. It prides
itself on not looking beyond its nose. There is no room in our
text-books for this girl and her claims. But--" He stood on the
corner and su