"Philip," he said, pushing back his chair, "you must be ill, my poor boy.
Evidently we have not been treating you rightly; you have been more ill
all through than I supposed. Let me persuade you to go to bed."

"I am perfectly well," I said. "Father, don't let us deceive one another.
I am neither a man to go mad nor to see ghosts. What it is that has got
the command over me I can't tell; but there is some cause for it. You are
doing something or planning something with which I have a right to
interfere."

He turned round squarely in his chair, with a spark in his blue eyes.
He was not a man to be meddled with. "I have yet to learn what can
give my son a right to interfere. I am in possession of all my
faculties, I hope."

"Father," I cried, "won't you listen to me? No one can say I have been
undutiful or disrespectful. I am a man, with a right to speak my mind,
and I have done so; but this is different. I am not here by my own will.
Something that is stronger than I has brought me. There is something in
your mind which disturbs--others. I don't know what I am saying. This is
not what I meant to say; but you know the meaning better than I. Some
one--who can speak to you only by me--speaks to you by me; and I know
that you understand."

He gazed up at me, growing pale, and his underlip fell. I, for my part,
felt that my message was delivered. My heart sank into a stillness so
sudden that it made me faint. The light swam in my eyes; everything went
round with me. I kept upright only by my hold upon the chair; and in the
sense of utter weakness that followed, I dropped on my knees I think
first, then on the nearest seat that presented itself, and, covering my
face with my hands, had hard ado not to sob, in the sudden removal of
that strange influence,--the relaxation of the strain.

There was silence between us for some time; then he said, but with a
voice slightly broken, "I don't understand you, Phil. You must have
taken some fancy into your mind which my slower intelligence--Speak out
what you want to say. What do you find fault with? Is it all--all that
woman Jordan?"

He gave a short, forced laugh as he broke off, and shook me
almost roughly by the shoulder, saying, "Speak out! what--what do
you want to say?"

"It seems, sir, that I have said everything." My voice trembled more than
his, but not in the same way. "I have told you that I did not come by my
own will,--quite otherwise. I resisted as long as I co