"You are wonderfully kind," he said. "I wanted to ask you to have this Brassfield tell you all he will about the wedding--the date, and everything you can get out of the fellow. And have him act as naturally as you can, so as to see more clearly how he carries himself. You see what I want, don't you?" "I think so," she returned. "Conversation must be a little difficult, isn't it? You remembered some of the things I told you about?" "Difficult?" he exclaimed. "Oh, Clara, it's impossible! It's so much so, that I hardly dare go back any more. I'm sending flowers and notes and doing the best I can; but it won't do at all: I must call oftener--must! And I'm afraid I have spoiled everything." "Then you find the lady quite--quite endurable?" "She's adorable," went on Florian, with the gush which comes at the first opportunity to discuss the dear one with a sympathetic third party. "She's perfectly exquisite! I have thought of nothing, dreamed of nothing, since I left her, except, except----" "Ah!" said Clara, "the situation must be perfectly lovely--for you--both---- And I'm sure you got along nicely." "No, no! I spoiled everything, I know I did. But bring this fellow up and ask him those things, please; and also about a Miss Scarlett---- No, leave that out. Just about the wedding, and about--I was going to ask about our house; but the judge found that out, where it is, and all. Just about the--the things between her and me, a little more, you know!" The hypnotic subject yields to control more and more readily by repeated surrender. So there was little of gazing into the party-colored eyes now. "You will soon sleep," said Madame le Claire, in that dominating way of hers; "and when you wake you will be Eugene Brassfield just as he used to be, and the room and all the surroundings, and myself--all will seem familiar, and you will be quite at home with me. Sleep, sleep!" Her hand swept down and closed his eyes, and he lay back in his chair entranced. Madame le Claire sat long and looked at him yearningly. She smoothed back the hair from his brow with many soft touches, and stooped and softly kissed his forehead. Then she lightly tapped his wrist, and sharply said, "Wake!" Eugene Brassfield opened his eyes with a smile. There was something still faintly suggestive of tenderness in the look with which Madame le Claire regarded him, and he returned it with the air of a man to whom such looks are neither unusual nor repugnant. "We were just talking," said she, with the air of reminding him of a topic from which he had wandered, "about your wedding. When is it to be?" "The appointed date," said he, "is April the fifth; but, of course, I shall move for an earlier one if possible." "I should think," remarked Madame le Claire, "that the date fixed would give Miss Waldron all too short a time for preparation."