“No again.”
“Oh, please don’t be so reserved. I feel with absolute certitude there is something singular about you. It is in your eyes. I thought it certain you communed with spirits. I am not asking out of curiosity, Sinclair, no! I am myself a seeker, you know, and I am so lonely.”
“Tell me, then!” I encouraged him. “I know absolutely nothing of ghosts. I live in my dreams: that is what you have felt about me. Other people live in dreams as well, but not in their own, that is the difference.”
“Yes, perhaps so,” he whispered. “Only it depends on the sort of dreams you live in. Have you ever heard of white magic?”
I had to admit my ignorance.
“It’s when you learn to get the mastery over yourself. You can be immortal, and have magical powers as well. Have you never practised such experiments?”
On my evincing curiosity with regard to those practices, he was mysteriously silent, but when I turned to go he burst out in explanation.
“For example, when I go to sleep or when I wish to concentrate my thoughts I do such exercises. I think of something or other, a word for instance, or a name, or a geometrical figure. Then I think it into myself, as strongly as I can. I try to get it into my head, until I feel it is there. Then I think it in my neck, and so on, until I am quite full of it. Then my thoughts are concentrated and nothing more can disturb my repose.”
I understood to a certain degree what he meant. Yet I felt he had something else in his mind, he was oddly excited and hasty. I tried to make the questions easy for him, and he soon gave me an indication of what immediately concerned him.
“You are also continent?” he asked me anxiously.