“I never shivered with cold and felt my hair rise upon my head at the sight of any living thing,” said Unorna dreamily, and still shading her eyes with her hand.
“But might you not feel that if you chanced to see some one whom you particularly disliked?” asked Keyork, with a gentle laugh.
“Disliked?” repeated Unorna in a harsh voice. She changed her position and looked at him. “Yes, perhaps that is possible. I had not thought of that. And yet--I would rather it had been a ghost.”
“More interesting, certainly, and more novel,” observed Keyork, slowly polishing his smooth cranium with the palm of his hand. His head, and the perfect hemisphere of his nose, reflected the light like ivory balls of different sizes.
“I was standing before him,” said Unorna. “The place was lonely and it was already night. The stars shone on the snow, and I could see distinctly. Then she--that woman--passed softly between us. He cried out, calling her by name, and then fell forward. After that, the woman was gone. What was it that I saw?”
“You are quite sure that it was not really a woman?”
“Would a woman, and of all women that one, have come and gone without a word?”
“Not unless she is a very singularly reticent person,” answered Keyork, with a laugh. “But you need not go so far as the ghost theory for an explanation. You were hypnotised, my dear friend, and he made you see her. That is as simple as anything need be.”
“But that is impossible, because----” Unorna stopped and changed colour.
“Because you had hypnotised him already,” suggested Keyork gravely.
“The thing is not possible,” Unorna repeated, looking away from him.
“I believe it to be the only natural explanation. You had made him sleep. You tried to force his mind to something contrary to its firmest beliefs. I have seen you do it. He is a strong subject. His mind rebelled, yielded, then made a final and desperate effort, and then collapsed. That effort was so terrible that it momentarily forced your will back upon itself, and impressed his vision on your sight. There are no ghosts, my dear colleague. There are only souls and bodies. If the soul can be defined as anything it can be defined as Pure Being in the Mode of Individuality but quite removed from the Mode of Matter. As for the body--well, there it is before you, in a variety of shapes, and in various states of preservation, as incapable of producing a ghost as a picture or a statue. You are altogether in a very nervous condition to-day. It is really quite indifferent whether that good lady be alive or dead.”