Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/259

Rh would be forced to recall and tell us in detail of the experiences which she had passed through in that condition, precisely as the persons possessed of the 'devil's claw' who were burned and tortured as witches in the Middle Ages had the ability sometimes to go into trances where they knew and told of things which they were not conscious of in their ordinary state; precisely as certain clairvoyants to-day are often able to tell correctly certain things of which they could seem to have no natural knowledge.

"As for Miss Iris, there is now no reason for apprehension. Ordinarily, in case conditions might arise which would remind her so strongly of the events that took place here last Wednesday, she would be thrown automatically into the condition she was in this afternoon when she gave us her narrative. She would then repeat all the particulars rapidly aloud, as you have heard her give them; or she would act them out dramatically, going through all the motions of her flight from Penol, and her attempt to save your papers. And each reminder being made more easy by the one before, these 'trances' as you call them, would become more and more frequent.

"But knowing now, as you do, all the particulars of what happened, you have only to recount them to her, repeating them time after time if necessary, until she normally remembers them and you have drawn the two parts of her consciousness back again into one. She will then, except to the psychologist, be the same as other people, and will show no more peculiarity in the rest of her life than she had already shown in that part of it she has passed in your household. My work