uneasiness which escapes my examination as well as yours? For that
somnambulism offers us an excellent way."

"But since I am not ill, what more could I tell you when I am asleep than
when I am awake?"

"We shall see."

"It is an experiment that I ask you not to attempt. Would you try a
poison on me?"

"Somnambulism is not a poison."

"Who knows?"

"Those who have made use of it."

"But you have not."

"Still I know enough to know that you will run no danger in my hands."

She believed that he opened a door of escape to her.

"Never mind, I am too much afraid. If you ever want to make me talk in a
state of forced somnambulism, ask one of your 'confreres' in whom you
have confidence to put me to sleep."

Before a 'confrere' she was certain he would not ask her dangerous
questions.

He understood that she wished to escape him.

"Afraid of what?" he asked. "That I shall ask you questions about the
past, concerning your life before we knew each other, and demand a
confession that would wound my love?"

"O Victor!" she cried, distracted. "What more cruel wound could you give
me than these words? My confession! It comprises three words: I love you;
I have never loved any one but you; I shall never love any one but you. I
have no past; my life began with my love."

He could not press it without showing the importance that he attached to
it.

"I do not insist," he said; "it is a way like any other, but better. You
do not wish it, and we will not talk of it."

But he yielded too quickly for her to hope that he renounced his project,
and she remained under the influence of a stupefying terror. What would
she say if he made her talk? Everything, possibly. She did not even know
what thoughts were hidden in the depths of her brain, and she knew
absolutely nothing of this forced somnambulism with which she was
threatened.

At this time the works of the school of Nancy on sleep, hypnotism, and
suggestion, had not yet been published, or at least the book which served
as their starting-point was not known, and she knew nothing of processes
that were employed to provoke the hypnotic sleep. As soon as her husband
left the house she looked for some book in the library that would
enlighten her. But the dictionary that she found gave only obscure or
confused instructions in which she floundered. The only exact point that
struck her was the method employed to produce sleep; to make the subject
look at a brilliant ob