Carefully laying their plans, they quietly spread the rumour that Ingles
had promised to restore to health old Mary Jewell, who had been bedridden
ten years, and had sent word and prayed to have him lay his hands upon
her--Catholic though she was. The Faith Healer, face to face with this
supreme and definite test, would have retreated from it but for Laura
Sloly. She expected him to do it, believed that he could, said that he
would, herself arranged the day and the hour, and sang so much exaltation
into him, that at last a spurious power seemed to possess him. He felt
that there had entered into him something that could be depended on,
not the mere flow of natural magnetism fed by an outdoor life and a
temperament of great emotional force, and chance, and suggestion--
and other things. If, at first, he had influenced Laura, some ill-
controlled, latent idealism in him, working on a latent poetry and
spirituality in her, somehow bringing her into nearer touch with her
lost Playmates than she had been in the long years that had passed;
she, in turn, had made his unrationalised brain reel; had caught him up
into a higher air, on no wings of his own; had added another lover to her
company of lovers--and the first impostor she had ever had.
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