"How do you know it?"
"Well, in the first place, if you had been a medium for very long, the clever medium that you undoubtedly are, you would have made more money at it."
"I have made money at it."
"Not as much as you should have made. You wouldn't live as you do if you had money."
If she resented this assertion, she gave no sign of it, and he went on with the cool assurance of a physician who is certain of his diagnosis. "You may persuade yourself that you are in that business because you are interested in it or because you know that you have an unaccountable power. But you are doing it chiefly for the same reason that most of us ply our trades; because you want to make money."
"Well?" She commented, "It does supply me with a living, and you know there's a theory that we must live."
He laughed. "You don't have to live the way you do. There are much easier ways for you to accomplish that end. Have you got anybody dependent on you?"
"No, but I am horribly in debt." The admission seemed to slip from her without her permission, and when the words were out a little frown puckered her forehead. The eyes of her escort were fixed upon the ruby pendant, so obviously a genuine and costly stone. She toyed absently with it, putting a cruel strain upon its slender thread-like chain of gold. "Do you know," she said slowly, "I believe you would make a wonderful hypnotist. I believe that you could even hypnotize me."
The bold amber eyes gazed straight into hers. "But you told me, didn't you, that hypnotism had to be a coöperative measure? You said, I remember, that nobody could hypnotize anybody else unless—unless the victim were willing."
One of his hands closed over hers as it reached for the sugar-bowl. She made no effort to draw it away.