“Nick Carter,” she said, standing in front of him.
“Yes?” he replied.
“I am about to awaken you now. You will forget that you have slept. You will remember, only, a belief that I shall give you now.”
“Yes.”
“You will believe that you have held me tightly in your arms; that my head has been pillowed upon your breast; that you have told me of your love for me; that I have confessed my love for you. You will implicitly believe all that, when you awaken.”
“Yes. I will believe all that.”
“And, when you are seemingly in your right mind, you will look your love for me; you will feel it, too, through all your being—but you will make no effort to demonstrate it. You will not so much as touch me with your hands. You will be the slave to my will. You will love me with all your strength, and you will believe that I return that love—poor fool. And now, awake! I command it! Awake, Nick Carter!”
But it was no part of Nick Carter’s policy to wake up just then. He believed there was more to be learned if Juno believed him to be in the hypnotic trance, and he realized that there would never be another opportunity like the present one for learning things that he wished to know about. So, instead of starting fully awake, as she had commanded him to do, he sprang up only half alive to things about him, seemingly; and he did the very thing which he knew would compel her to reduce him again, as she would suppose, to the hypnotic trance.
He seized her in his arms.
For just one instant of time she did not resist him. Then she jerked herself away, out of his grasp, and he made no effort to prevent her doing so. He sank backward upon his chair as if he were again fully under her influence.