"What love have you for me, when you do not trust my own boy to me?"
"I love you as my husband, but I am not willing my children shall either of them be mesmerized, even by their father."
"You are not willing? May I ask you how you are going to help it if I feel inclined to do so? I can mesmerize you any time I want to. How are you going to protect your children from what you cannot protect yourself from?"
"By the might of my mother's love."
"Ha—ha! So you think a mother's indulgent, negative love a secure protection from positive and well directed thoughts. Wonderful logic, that. It is worthy a woman's brain. You may be, as I know you are, a proficient musician, but you have much to learn about science. Like all ignorant persons, you talk loquaciously where you know nothing, and possess no power. It is really ludicrous. You, a negative sensitive, defy me. Why, I could, if I chose to exert the might of my will, make you shrink from the embraces of both of your children, as though they were serpents; yet you say I shall not mesmerize my own children.—Excuse me, I cannot help laughing."
While William had been talking, he had not been looking at Clarissa. When she spoke, he turned his eyes to her, and he would not admit to anyone his surprise at the strength of character he found there. He was too thorough a master of his work, not to recognize positive resistance when he met it. If anyone had told him Clarissa could have looked him firmly, unflinchingly in the eye, and dared him to use his will, he would not have believed it. She spoke calmly and slowly: "I defy your power; now when I am sick and weak, or at any future time, to influence me in the slightest degree. You may be sure you will never affect my children by any thought suggestions while my brain is clear and in normal condition. Try it.—Begin upon me.—I not only do not fear you.—I defy you and your boasted power.—You shall never mesmerize Augustus. If I knew you had the power (which I doubt) to make him walk, and that was the price to pay, I should say, 'Leave him as he is; a cripple,' but you cannot mesmerize him."
As she spoke, Clarissa had risen to a sitting position in the bed. Her eyes shone with a feverish lustre. An impartial observer would have recognized the fact that here were two positive souls clashing in no ordinary encounter. Undoubtedly they would have given the credit of the final outcome to William, as he was working from the tried basis of experience, while she was voicing the natural sentiments of a loving mother's heart. Scientists have seen equally zealous mothers changed so they would have felt very similar to William. He thought he knew Clarissa, but he had yet some points to learn about her. The baby woke, disturbed by the unwonted voices, and began to cry.—Clarissa reached down, and drew her close up to her, then looked defiantly up at William, and continued:
"You—you brave man of science, say you can make me dread my baby's influence. Do it. Now is as good an opportunity as any man could ask, for we are alone. I hold her lovingly to me—I defy you to make me put her down. You are a coward—I see by your eyes you do not intend to try. Only cowards talk without acting. Your words sound well to any person who is afraid of you; I am not. I only feel I am chagrined and ashamed to look my children in the face, and say, 'I chose and gave you such a coward of a man for a father.' I—"
"Clarissa, stop; you will make yourself ill."
"I will not stop. I will tell you my opinion of you.—I defy you and your power to influence me, or my children. You have yet to learn what power and might there lies in a mother's love. I have not your power or experience. I may not use my thoughts as scientifically as to furnish my name with the lustre which surrounds yours, but I have power to protect my children from yours, or any other man's thoughts, or the united thoughts of them all. Put your mind upon me. You can hypnotize me any time, can you? Do it now. Make me fear my baby. Do not dare approach my bed, nor touch this child.—I do not care to listen to your further conversation. This is my apartment. If you have left the faint shadow even, of a gentlemanly instinct, you will leave it now, and forbear to thrust your unwelcome presence upon me again until I am able to take my children and leave."