"I am really not offended. I am rather distressed, if anything," she said, knitting her brows. "You see, Doctor van Heerden has always been most kind to me."
"He got you your rooms at the flats," he replied quietly; "he was also ready to give you employment the moment you were providentially discharged from Punsonby's. Does it not strike you, Miss Cresswell, that every kind act of Doctor van Heerden's has had a tendency to bring you together, into closer association, I mean? Does it not appear to you that the net result of all the things that might have happened to you in the past few days would have been to make you more and more dependent upon Doctor van Heerden? For example, if you had gone into his employ as he planned that you should?"
His face was grave now and the laughter had gone out of his eyes.
"Planned," he said quietly. "You were discharged from Punsonby's at Doctor van Heerden's instigation."
"That will not make it any less the fact," said Mr. Beale. "You were nearly arrested--again at Doctor van Heerden's instigation. He was waiting for you when you came back from Punsonby's, ready to offer you his job. When he discovered you had already engaged yourself he telephoned to White, instructing him to have you arrested so that you might be disgraced and might turn to him, your one loyal friend."
She listened speechless. She could only stare at him and could not even interrupt him. For her shrewd woman instinct told her so convincingly that even her sense of loyalty could not eject the doubt which assailed her mind, that if there was not truth in what he was saying there was at least probability.
"I suggest even more," Beale went on. "I suggest that for some purpose, Doctor van Heerden desires to secure a mental, physical and moral ascendancy over you. In other words, he wishes to enslave you to his will."
She looked at him in wonder and burst into a peal of ringing laughter.
"Really, Mr. Beale, you are too absurd," she said.
"Aren't I?" he smiled. "It sounds like something out of a melodrama."
"Why on earth should he want to secure a mental ascendancy over me? Do you suggest----" She flushed.
"I suggest nothing any longer," said Beale, slipping off from the end of the table. "I merely make a statement of fact. I do not think he has any designs on you, within the conventional meaning of that phrase, indeed, I think he wants to marry you--what do you think about that?"