Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/376

286 tired and often had a headache. Whilst the others flooded the staircases and rooms, always full of boisterous spirits, she loved to come and sit on the foot of my long chair, and she liked, too, to take my hand and press it hard against her aching brow, always declaring it sent the headache away.

“It is so quiet round you,” she often said.

Once in a London drawing-room a lady astonished every one by suddenly rising and coming towards me.

“Do you know,” she said, “that you are simply full of magnetism— that you have a great gift, and could even cure people by laying hands on them?”

“I have never been aware of it,” I answered, laughing, and of course surprised.

“Yes, indeed you have. But you have never studied it or cultivated it, and, therefore, you have misused a wonderful gift God has given you!”

“But what am I to do?” I asked helplessly, believing the lady, whom I did not know, to be—well—odd!

“You must study the subject, and learn how to cultivate this great gift. I felt it the minute you came into the room. You extract the vitality from other people.”

“Do you mean I bore and tirethem?—if so—”

“Oh no! but people like you can, if they will, draw vitality from others. You could live to be a hundred. You are a most magnetic person.”

The lady talked a lot more of this sort of thing, and quite alarmed me, but stirred my curiosity, so after this I was often to be seen in the Row or at parties, sitting very close to healthy, rotund old ladies endeavouring to will their exuberant health out of them, but I cannot say I ever felt successful; and when it came to my hunting out