The Mystery of Evelin Delorme: A Hypnotic Story — Story, Setting & Ideas

The Documentary Frame and Narrative Voice

The opening pages establish a deliberate ambiguity about fiction and fact. Paine's introduction describes his own research into hypnotism and his meetings with Dr. Flint, who provides a written account of Eva Delorme. This memoir is quoted directly, using first-person testimony: “On the 9th of July, 1878, there came to my office in St. Louis a strikingly beautiful young woman.” The clinical tone of Flint's observations—he notes her “evident wealth and aristocratic breeding” and her status as “one of the most perfect subjects I have ever known”—contrasts sharply with the romantic prose that follows when the narrative shifts to the artist Julian Goetze. The handkerchief bearing the initials “E. M. D.” becomes a concrete clue linking the two identities, and the reader is left to weigh the reliability of each narrator.

Hypnotic Suggestion and the Creation of a Double

The central conceit of the story is Eva Delorme's request to be given a double personality through hypnotism. She explicitly asks to become “a heartless, haughty, gay woman of the world—precisely opposite, in fact, to what she really appeared.” The excerpts show Flint's matter-of-fact acceptance of this request, treating it as a therapeutic measure to help her forget sorrow. The narrative does not explain the mechanism of the hypnotic transformation, but the consequences are dramatized through Julian's confusion when Eva's words and manner suddenly echo those of Evelin March. The repeated phrase “we must wait” becomes a verbal signature that blurs the boundary between the two selves, suggesting that the hypnotic suggestion may have created more than a temporary role.

Pace and Emotional Register in the Romantic Scenes

The excerpts reveal a marked shift in pace and diction when the story moves from Flint's office to Julian's studio. The romantic passages are written in a flowing, almost breathless style: “He caught her to his breast and covered her face with kisses.” The artist's proposal includes a vision of escape to “a tiny island in the Mediterranean on the coast of France,” a lyrical passage that contrasts with the earlier clinical language. The morning after, Julian's mood is described with sensory detail—“the blood was circulating rhythmically through his veins”—and the narrative slows to follow his walk and breakfast. This alternation between rapid emotional intensity and quieter, observational passages gives the story a rhythmic structure that mirrors the hypnotic trance itself, with its shifts between heightened suggestion and ordinary consciousness.

Readers should pay close attention to the handkerchief and the initials it bears, as well as to the repeated phrase “we must wait,” which appears in both Eva's and Evelin's speech. The story's brevity—under 20,000 words—means that every detail may carry weight. The documentary frame invites skepticism: is the memoir genuine, or is it part of the fiction? The answer lies in how the narrative resolves the tension between the two personalities, a question the excerpts leave open.

Reading about Evelin’s crafted second self, I remembered sitting with The Broken Gate: A Novel — Story, Setting & Ideas one grey afternoon, feeling the same ache of a person trying to outrun their own history. Paine’s hypnotic veils and the gate’s locked fields both whispered that identity is less a door than a hallway—quietly endless, softly mirrored.