“Then why do you poison my mind with such conversation?”
“What!”
“You sit there pouring into my mentality thought after thought that is deadly poisonous, don’t you know it?”
“Why––!”
“You don’t mean to harm me, I know,” pleaded the girl. “But if you only understood mental laws you would know that every thought entering one’s mind tends to become manifested in some way. Thoughts of disease, disaster, death, scandal––all 153 tend to become externalized in discordant ways, either on the body, or in the environment. You don’t want any such things manifested to me, do you? But you might just as well hand me poison to drink as to sit there and pour such deadly conversation into me.”
Mrs. Gannette slowly drew herself up with the hauteur of a grandee. Carmen seized her hand. “I do not want to listen to these unreal things which concern only the human mind,” she said earnestly. “Nor should you, if you are truly aristocratic, for aristocracy is of the thought. I am not going to marry Reginald. A human title means nothing to me. But one’s thought––that alone is one’s claim to real aristocracy. I know I have offended you, but only because I refuse to let you poison me. Now I will go.”
She left the divan and the petrified dame, and hurriedly mingled with the crowd on the floor.
“The little cat!” exploded Mrs. Gannette, when she again found herself. “She has mortally insulted me!”
Carmen went directly to the pale woman, still sitting alone, who had been one of the objects of Mrs. Gannette’s slighting remarks. The woman glanced up as she saw the girl approaching, and a look of wonder came into her eyes. Carmen held out a hand.
“I am Carmen Ariza,” she said simply. “You are Miss Wall. I want you to be my friend.”