This rueful repetition of one of the several set phrases with which he punctuated his most serious utterances was accompanied by the quick, cheerful laugh which was his greatest charm. Then the laugh’s smile stiffened into an expression of utter misery.
So shocked was Dolores that she forgot her hurry to go.
He turned from the sight of her sympathy; forced himself to continue. “I am not an honest osteopath, Miss Trent. My success is founded on the fact that I am magnetic. You felt that the first day you met me. You remember? See how strangely I can make you feel with a touch.”
“Yes, I remember. Oh, don’t—please don’t do that again!”
Even in freeing her wrist from the slim pulsant fingers which had clasped it, she realized that her sensations justified his boast. Fearing his touch, she liked it.
“Never mind, I won’t. I don’t want to attract you that way. You can trust me. I won’t touch you again—that is, not until you wish me to. Try to get what I’m telling you. It may kill me with you, but there’s no other way than to make a clean breast of it. I’ve built up my practice on nothing more or less than animal magnetism. Excites through the touch system. Gives sensations instead of curing them. Lord help me, she doesn’t see when I tell her how low I am!”
He paused as if in hope of help from her. But Dolores could not speak. She was trying to believe that she had misunderstood.
“Lately I find that I’m getting psychic control,” he continued. “A nice little lot of harm I could do in the world if I wanted to.” His voice was husky. In the moment before he dropped his face into his hands his clean smile showed again. “But I don’t want to. I hate this life. I hate my success. I hate being called in the profession ‘The Ladies’ Pet.’ Did you know I was called ‘The Ladies’ Pet’?”
“I know,” said Dolores, “that Mrs. Cabot thinks you are a remarkable man.”
“She should. She made me what I am to-day and to-morrow—handed me over to her social set. She’s satisfied, if I’m not. She knows and I know that she can unmake me just as easily.”