"Did I do all right?" she asked, with just a trace of anxiety in her tone.
"Very fine, thank you," assured Kennedy. "It wasn't such a terrible thing, after all, was it?"
"N-no," she admitted, reluctantly.
Craig continued to look over the list, talking about all sorts of perfectly unrelated subjects with her, as though to remove from her mind as much is possible the memory of what had been said and done.
"There is just one other thing I want," he added, as he picked up the list again and handed it to me, his finger significantly on the third column that he had laid out. "It won't take long, Mrs. Wilford, now that you understand the game. Walter, take that other column. I am merely going through the list rapidly again. Don't try to recollect the answers you gave—but then, on the other hand, don't try to make them different. Do you get what I mean? Don't force your ideas. Just remain relaxed, easy, natural. Let me have just what comes into your mind, the moment it occurs to you—please don't try to change it."
"I see," she murmured, but I thought in a manner that showed she was just a little bit on her guard, and determined, if she made any slips before, not to repeat them.
In quick staccato Kennedy repeated the words from the list, beginning with "foot," to which again, almost mechanically, she responded with "shoe." I noted the answering words, as before, while he recorded the time.
It did not take me long to see that what Kennedy was after was to discover whether, on the second trial, she would make any very significant changes in the words.
Nor was he giving her a chance to cover up. The words came so fast that even I had no time to dwell on them. I shall not pause to do so here, for later Kennedy analyzed them carefully. Here is our third list, complete:
| 1 | 2 | 3 |
| foot | shoe | shoe |
| gray | black | black |
| dream | Lathrop | Lathrop |
| struggle | escape | escape |
| ship | ocean | ocean |
| bean | baked | white |
| lion | path | beard |
| book | newspaper | newspaper |
| false | true | true |
| voyage | Europe | Europe |
| money | poor | poor |
| sad | myself | myself |
| quarrel | Vail | words |
| marry | Vail | Vail |
| bull | breath | field |
| sleep | dream | dream |
| foolish | wise | wise |
| despise | love | like |
| finger | hand | hand |
| friend | none | none |
| serpent | hiss | crowd |
| face | man | stranger |
| chair | sit | sit |
| bottle | stopper | stopper |
| glass | empty | empty |