Kate Chopin

“ The Golf-Girl might have doubted the sanity of such a speech; not Pauline; she was used to him. As he withdrew to go and shake hands with Faverham who was near-by; she converted her mind, so far as she was able, into a vacuous blank, abandoning it to his intention. The mental suggestion which Graham rapidly formulated as he held Faverham’s hand, ran somewhat in this wise:
“Pauline is charming, intelligent, honest, sincere. She has depths in her nature that are worth sounding.” ”

“ She is not charming or attractive,” he suggested silently. “Pauline is not the woman she was six months ago when she first went to Cedar Branch.” Graham lit his cigar at the lamp and returned to his chair in the shadow.
Faverham shivered as if a cold breath had swept by him, and drew his lounge a little nearer the fire. He turned his head and looked at his wife as she passed in her slow walk. Again he gazed into the fire, then restlessly back at his wife; over and over. Graham kept his eyes fixed upon him, silently repeating the suggestion. ”

“ The Golf-Girl threw a pellet of bread at him from the far end of the table and Graham smiled and chuckled inwardly and took some mental notes.
Faverham maintained a lively conversation with Pauline across the table during the entire repast, while inwardly he was thinking: “How wonderfully that soft brown suits her complexion and eyes! And what very sweet eyes she has behind those glasses. What depth! what animation! Could any thing be more captivating than that unstudied, spontaneous manner? and what a bright intelligence! By Jove! it puts a fellow on his mettle.” ”

“ Faverham himself was not a hard worker. With plenty of money and a good deal of charm, he dispensed both lavishly and was a great favorite with both women and men. There was one privilege which he assumed at all times; he persistently avoided people, places and things which bored him. One being among others on earth who thoroughly bored Faverham, was Pauline, the fiancée of his friend Graham. Pauline was a brown little body with fluffy hair and eye glasses, possessed of an investigating turn of mind and much energy of manner in the pursuit of mental problems. ”

“ She said nothing. Love is selfish. She was tasting the exultation of liberty and shrank from inflicting the panacea of conventional phrase or utterance upon a wounded soul.
There were more things than one to trouble Graham. How had his suggestion held and how would it hold? There was no doubt that Faverham was still under the influence of the spell, as Graham detected at once upon first meeting him. The suggestion seemed to have got beyond the professor’s control. ”

“ Graham thought of the driving, the sailing, the dancing in all of which Faverham was the leading and moving spirit and the temptation would convert Pauline from an object of indifference in Faverham’s eyes to a captivating young woman. Under some pretext he approached and laid his hand upon Faverham who was lacing his boot. “When you meet Pauline this morning at breakfast she will be charming; she will be quite the most attractive woman in the room and the only one worthy of your attention and consideration.” ”

“ This was the mental suggestion which Don Graham brought to bear upon his friend Faverham as the two were making their morning toilet together. Graham was a college professor, a hard working young fellow with a penchant for psychic research. He attended hypnotic séances and thereby had acquired a hypnotic power by no means trifling, which he sometimes exercised with marked success, especially upon his friend Faverham. ”

“ Whereupon a little group of professors at the other end of the “phone” would be moved by a current of gratification hardly to be understood by those who have never known the success of a scientific demonstration. ”

“ Their marriage seemed to mark the culmination of a certain tourtuous doubt that possessed itself of the young professor and rendered his days intolerable. “If, if, if!” kept buzzing in his brain: during hours of work ”