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mysterious.

"The office of this drug can be twofold. It has the power in itself to
flush the cerebral centres with fresh blood, and it can also serve as
a point of support for the suggestion I am about to give. It does not
really matter whether she has any phase of what they call mediumistic
power or not. To rid her of her trances will liberate her from a
belief in her ills, and that is the main consideration."

He found the greatest encouragement at this point in the many cases
where perfect mental health had been restored by means of a complete
change of mental stimuli. "All hypnotic methods," he read, "have one
thing in common, and that is the diversion of attention from the
insistency of external surroundings.... The hypnotic state has one
broad characteristic, and that is the working of the subliminal
consciousness in directions unusual in ordinary life."

"The way to help her is to cut off every suggestion which leads to the
trance and to the thought of the dead; to centre her mind on the
serene, the busy, the sunny. Thus flooding her brain with sights and
sounds utterly disassociated with her past."

The realization that she was at last domesticated under his roof made
her redemption seem easy, certain, almost accomplished. There remained
only the painful duty of separating her from her mother. He could see
that this would bring keen sorrow upon them both, but that if she
could be brought to consider him in the light of her future husband,
the change would seem less violent; for, after all, it was the law of
life which subordinated the claims of the mother to those of the
husband.

"At any rate, the issue is now clear in my mind. A powerful chain of
suggestion has been formed and fastened upon her by her own mother and
by Clarke. That chain must be broken; it is broken in Clarke's case,
and no matter what the pain, the fear, this course may cause the
mother, it must be pursued in order to restore Viola to health."

He passed from this to a forecast of the radical changes in his own
life which an avowal of love would make, and his mood chilled. He had
always imagined the announcement of his engagement, falling into a
sober and decorous paragraph among the society notes, and had figured
himself receiving with dignified composure the congratulations of his
associates and club-fellows. He had never considered the possibility
of shrinking from these publicities, nor fancied himself in the light
of finding e