"I don't remember a word of it. I came to myself in my own room, and only mother was with me." Her rebellious fire blazed up again. "Oh, Dr. Serviss, I was resigned yesterday, but to-night I am in terror again, and they know it. They are eager to show their power, to confound you and convert Dr. Weissmann. I'm sure they will do some wonderful thing for you to-night if you will let them."
"The best thing 'they' could do for me would be to let you sit and talk to me," he replied in the voice of a lover.
She seemed to listen to some interior voice. "They are insisting. They are here—listen!"
As he listened a series of throbbing raps seemed to come from the chair beneath her hand.
"Very well, we will sit." As he said this three heavy, rending, low thuds sounded on the under side of the table.
"That is grandfather," she said. "He wants you to be very rigid, and so do I," she said. "Sometimes it seems as if I did these things myself—I mean certain physical things—and I get all mixed in my mind. I want you to study me." She passed her hand wearily over her face, and Morton looked at her in sorrow, meditating a firm, decisive assault on her hallucination, but checked himself. "If I am to help you, I must know all about you," he said at last, "and a sitting may help."
"You wonder at my fear of my grandfather, but that's because you don't realize his power. Let me tell you what happened to me once, when I tried to run away from him. I became desperate one summer vacation and determined to get away from it all. Without telling mother, I took the train one morning—" She paused abruptly and pressed both hands to her burning cheeks. "Oh, it was horrible! My grandfather threw me into a trance on the train, and the conductor thought I was drunk—" She shuddered with the memory of it, and could not finish. "Since then I have never dared to really oppose him."
He pondered her blush, the quiver of her lips, and the timid look of her eyes, and gravely answered: "I share your horror of an experience like that. But it does not endear your malevolent grandfather to me. He must be a kind of male witch—"
"You mustn't feel that way towards him," she cried out in some alarm. "He is firm because he feels that I should be doing my work—"
"I'd like to talk this matter over with him, but I don't like to have you entranced. Is that necessary?"