His face grew reflective, almost stern. "I wish there were some way of taking you out of the world in which you now suffer. I wish--" He paused, checked by the thought of Clarke's claims upon her.
"There is only one way--my grandfather must consent to my release; he rules us all."
This delusion rose like a stone wall at the end of every avenue, and Morton turned to a personal explanation. "I cannot associate what you seem to me now with what you were when I last saw you. What would you have said had I seized you the other day--snatched you from the stairs and ran--"
Her eyes opened wide. "The stairs?"
"Had you no knowledge of following your mother down the stairway after our interview?"
"I knew I was entranced, but I didn't know--What did I do?" She asked this anxiously.
"Nothing." He hastened again to change the current. "We were in hot argument. You came down as peace-maker. I went away cravenly, most impotently, leaving you there like a captive."
"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."