The Parasite | Page 9

find some scientific explanation for the facts with
which you furnish me."
"Frankly, Professor Gilroy," said she, "I am not at all interested in
science, nor do I care whether it can or cannot classify these powers."
"But I was hoping----"
"Ah, that is quite another thing. If you make it a personal matter," said
she, with the pleasantest of smiles, "I shall be only too happy to tell you
any thing you wish to know. Let me see; what was it you asked me? Oh,
about the further powers. Professor Wilson won't believe in them, but
they are quite true all the same. For example, it is possible for an
operator to gain complete command over his subject-- presuming that
the latter is a good one. Without any previous suggestion he may make
him do whatever he likes."
"Without the subject's knowledge?"
"That depends. If the force were strongly exerted, he would know no
more about it than Miss Marden did when she came round and
frightened you so. Or, if the influence was less powerful, he might be
conscious of what he was doing, but be quite unable to prevent himself
from doing it."
"Would he have lost his own will power, then?"
"It would be over-ridden by another stronger one."
"Have you ever exercised this power yourself?"

"Several times."
"Is your own will so strong, then?"
"Well, it does not entirely depend upon that. Many have strong wills
which are not detachable from themselves. The thing is to have the gift
of projecting it into another person and superseding his own. I find that
the power varies with my own strength and health."
"Practically, you send your soul into another person's body."
"Well, you might put it that way."
"And what does your own body do?"
"It merely feels lethargic."
"Well, but is there no danger to your own health?" I asked.
"There might be a little. You have to be careful never to let your own
consciousness absolutely go; otherwise, you might experience some
difficulty in finding your way back again. You must always preserve
the connection, as it were. I am afraid I express myself very badly,
Professor Gilroy, but of course I don't know how to put these things in
a scientific way. I am just giving you my own experiences and my own
explanations."
Well, I read this over now at my leisure, and I marvel at myself! Is this
Austin Gilroy, the man who has won his way to the front by his hard
reasoning power and by his devotion to fact? 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. Do I accept it? Certainly not.
She must prove and re-prove before I yield a point. But if I am still a
sceptic, I have at least ceased to be a scoffer. We are to have a sitting
this evening, and she is to try if she can produce any mesmeric effect
upon me. If she can, it will make an excellent starting-point for our
investigation. No one can accuse me, at any rate, of complicity. If she

cannot, we must try and find some subject who will be like Caesar's
wife. Wilson is perfectly impervious.
10 P. M. I believe that I am on the threshold of an epoch-making
investigation. To have the power of examining these phenomena from
inside--to have an organism which will respond, and at the same time a
brain which will appreciate and criticise--that is surely a unique
advantage. I am quite sure that Wilson would give five years of his life
to be as susceptible as I have proved myself to be.
There was no one present except Wilson and his wife. I was seated with
my head leaning back, and Miss Penclosa, standing in front and a little
to the left, used the same long, sweeping strokes as with Agatha. At
each of them a warm current of air seemed to strike me, and to suffuse
a thrill and glow all through me from head to foot. My eyes were fixed
upon Miss Penclosa's face, but as I gazed the features seemed to blur
and to fade away. I was conscious only of her own eyes looking down
at me, gray, deep, inscrutable. Larger they grew and larger, until they
changed suddenly into two mountain lakes toward which I seemed to
be falling with horrible rapidity. I shuddered, and as I did so some
deeper stratum of thought told me that the shudder represented the rigor
which I had observed in Agatha. An instant later I struck the surface of
the lakes, now joined into