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."

He pondered her blush, the quiver of her lips, and the ti