Page:The council of seven.djvu/301

 This view of Wygram's unique powers was supported by the attention paid him by Saul Hartz. It was never a habit of the Colossus to flatter the vanity of his fellow men by sitting in public at the feet of Gamaliel. But it was clear to Helen that the orientalist had some potent attraction for him. More than once in the course of that day she saw the two men together in quiet corners. And to judge by the look of concentration on Mr. Hartz's face the subject of their talk was to him of vital concern.

At dinner, no doubt as a concession to the keen curiosity Helen had shown in regard to Mr. Wygram, she was taken in by him. Further acquaintance did but add to the interest he excited in her. Little passed between them that average people could have laid hold of as definitely enlarging the boundaries of human knowledge, but Helen felt all the same that her approach to certain subjects whose importance and value she could but vaguely surmise would from now on be more practical, more scientific, more expert.

"How far do you think it possible," she ventured to ask, "for one mind, or for a group of minds, to act subconsciously upon the mind of another person, without coming into direct contact with it, in order to control its actions?"

"An interesting speculation!" Wygram spoke with the simple candor of one very much a master of his subject. "I think myself the science—and as one happens to know, a dark and terrible science it is, which