"Fake. That's what it is," said Mr. Whyte. "Superstition."
"Now, Carroll, I know you're terribly wise, but you don't know everything," said Mrs. Whyte. "I'm sure I sometimes know what you are thinking--"
"That's telepathy, my angel, not hypnotism. Only you don't. You think you do, but I'll bet I could fool you nine times out of--nineteen!"
"I once saw a girl who was hypnotized, and it was horrible," said Miss Thurston. "She was lying in a show window of a shop, home in Blankville. She had been put to sleep, I learned, by some hypnotist who was exhibiting on the vaudeville stage, and who invited people to come up from the audience. I could just imagine how the pretty, silly, ignorant girl had been dared to go up. Then he was to awaken her publicly on the stage after forty-eight hours, and in the meantime she was exhibited on a cot in the window of a shop as an advertisement. I can't make you understand how unspeakably horrible it seemed to me."
"Where do you suppose her soul was?" asked Mrs. Whyte curiously.
"I don't know. But I know that there is something wicked about separating the soul and body. It is a partial murder."
"Bet you she was shamming," said Mr. Whyte, cynically.
"Oh, no, it was real,--terribly real," she cried. I had no opinions on the subject, but I thought Miss Thurston's earnestness very becoming, it brought such a spark into her dark eyes and broke up her rather severe tranquillity by a touch of undeniable feeling. But Mr. Whyte was unmoved.
"My dear Katherine, if there were any secret means by which one person could control the will of another and make him do what the controlling will commanded, the trusts would have bought it up long ago. A knowledge of how to do that would be worth millions,--and the millions would be ready for the man who could teach the trick."
"There are some things that money cannot buy," said Miss Thurston quietly.