Keyork Arabian might spend hours in giving her learned explanations of
what she did, but he never convinced her. Possibly he was not convinced
himself, and he still hesitated, perhaps, between the two great theories
advanced to explain the phenomena of hypnotism. He had told her that he
considered her influence to be purely a moral one, exerted by means of
language and supported by her extraordinary concentrated will. But
it did not follow that he believed what he told her, and it was not
improbable that he might have his own doubts on the subject--doubts
which Unorna was not slow to suspect, and which destroyed for her the
whole force of his reasoning. She fell back upon a sort of grossly
unreasonable mysticism, combined with a blind belief in those hidden
natural forces and secret virtues of privileged objects, which formed
the nucleus of mediaeval scientific research. The field is a fertile
one for the imagination and possesses a strange attraction for certain
minds. There are men alive in our own time to whom the transmutation of
metals does not seem an impossibility, nor the brewing of the elixir of
life a matter to be scoffed at as a matter of course. The world is full
of people who, in their inmost selves, put faith in the latent qualities
of precious stones and amulets, who believe their fortunes, their
happiness, and their lives to be directly influenced by some trifling
object which they have always upon them.
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