What was I to think of my experiences of that evening? Was
I really to take the spectacle that had seemed to fall upon my eyes
when listening to Sinfi's crwth, or rather when listening to her
song, as evidence that Winifred was alive? Oh, if I could, if I
could! Was I really to accept as true this fantastic superstition
about the crwth and the spirits of Snowdon and the 'living mullo'?
That was too monstrous a thought even for me to entertain.
Notwithstanding all that had passed in the long and dire struggle
between my reason and the mysticism inherited with the blood of two
lines of superstitious ancestors, which circumstances had conspired
to foster, my reason had only been baffled and thwarted; it had not
really been slain.
What, then, could be the explanation of the spectacle that had seemed
to fall upon my eyes? 'It is hallucination,' I said, 'and it is the
result of two very powerful causes--my own strong imagination,
excited to a state of feverish exaltation by the long strain of my
suffering, and that power in Sinfi which D'Arcy had described as her
"half-unconscious power as a mesmerist.
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