Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/223

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

TWO GENTLEMEN

placing themselves in a condition receptive to the more potent impulses of another; it is an inherent faculty, but can by training be developed to an amazing extent—a faculty with which women are more generously endowed than men, but in most cases a woman possessing this will depend upon it to the exclusion of logic; more than that, she abuses it, overworks it, lazily attempts to make it do the work of her mind to a point where it is no longer accurate, hence a negative benefit. A diplomat must possess it; the best diplomats develop it, just as a great musician of rich natural, talent must develop this by years of arduous practice; perhaps an explorer or collector like myself may possess it even most of all, because he must be a trained observer, which enables .him to buttress the psychic and the mental with a precise faculty for grasping subtle physical signs.

"Therefore, Doctor, in the brief moment in which the whiskey was brought I knew that Claud felt himself to be tricked, and I was

[ 207 ]