“Fair?” asked Julia, with unmitigated scorn.
“Couldn’t you give her a good womanly talking-to?”
“And what good do you suppose that would do? Did you ever hear of love being talked out of any woman?”
“I know—but you are clever enough without that—and after all it isn’t fair. It’s a violent assault on personality —”
Julia whirled about and confronted him with blazing eyes.
“Fair? Fair?” she cried. “And do you suppose I’d think twice about what is fair with that treacherous little fool? Do you suppose I would let any scruple weigh a feather with me when the happiness of my whole life is at stake? If you didn’t love me, you could go and I’d not condescend to lift a finger; but you do, you do, and nothing shall stand between us; nothing, I tell you! If I could have caught her alone this morning, I’d have twisted her neck and held her under the water until she was dead. And yet you imagine I’d stop at hypnotizing her? For the matter of that it will be treating her far better than she deserves, for she will practically have forgotten you when I am finished with her. She deserves to be left here in sackcloth—oh, she’s not the sort that kills herself, she’s far too selfish and vain—but she’s noisy and stubborn and the sort that calf-love makes ungovernable. She’d turn the island upside down and run to my mother with the story that you had compromised her—there’s nothing she wouldn’t tell her. My mother is a very old woman. The excitement might make her so ill that I should be detained here for months. And I won’t! I won’t! I’ll leave this island with you!”
Tay brought his hands down on her shoulders and gripped them. “By God, Julia!” he said hoarsely, “you are the woman for me. Together we’ll conquer the earth.”
“Oh, you’ll find me useful to you in many ways you barely suspect now. I can do more than hypnotize! But I don’t wish you to misunderstand me. What I do to Fanny will be nothing more than the reputable scientific psychotherapeutists do every day to their patients. I shall give her an immediate suggestion that her will shall not be weakened, that she shall no longer be under my control after coming out of the hypnotic trance. And as I said before, she will benefit equally with ourselves. We don’t practise black magic, we initiates; not that we are above it, but because we don’t dare. It rebounds like an arrow and strikes our greater powers dead. I never have harmed any one and I never shall, but that leaves an enormous field for action.”
“Good. And she’d not think of going to Bath House before to-morrow night. She heard me accept an invitation to lunch on board the cruiser. By the way, you might plant in that ill-regulated head the suggestion that she be less anxious to fall in love. There are men of all sorts —”
“That would be unfair, if you like! Our impulses are our birthright. To alter personality would be unjust, almost criminal, for the impulses that make a fool or worse of us in certain circumstances may be necessary for our happiness. Fanny must work out her own destiny. I shall settle my income from France’s estate on her, and induce Aunt Maria to take charge of her as far as England. There Ishbel will introduce her —”