t some time; and then the subject never came up again. I never
really cared!"

"Let me tell it to you," said Madame le Claire. "He was, all his life,
a man of wealth and standing. He was a scholar and a student of the
fine arts and letters. He was the pride of his town and his
university. Then, all at once, nearly six years ago, came on him one
of those strange experiences of which I, through my profession, am able
to speak to you as one having knowledge. He became another man. His
mind had drawn across it a dead line cutting off everything back of a
certain date. He did not tell you of his life, _because he did not
remember it himself_."

Elizabeth gasped, and turned pale.

"This life of his----" she began.

"--was a life which was in every way better--which will add to your
pride in him. But you must be prepared for some strange and unexpected
things. Now, for instance, a name--a name seems important; but what is
it? This loss of personality--of self-consciousness relating to the
past--it was loss of name, of mode of life, of all memory, except
certain blind, unconscious reflexes, in which the brain had no part.
How the name of Brassfield was suggested to this new-born personality
of his, no one can tell, he least of all. But----"

"Then his name--his name is--is not----"

Now here was a situation for a diplomat. To say that Brassfield was an
assumed name, an alias, was to shock the girl's womanish conservatism
to its very base. Madame le Claire proved herself a diplomat.

"Why," said she, as if the matter were, after all, of no importance,
"the name of Brassfield is his, legally, Judge Blodgett says, and
morally. These business names, as distinguished from others, are quite
common now, I am told--take mine, for instance. Eugene Brassfield was
not his name until five years ago, when this happened. He is really
Florian Amidon, son of the chemist Wilford Amidon, of whom, I have no
doubt, you have read."

The fact that the name of Wilford Amidon had never reached her ears,
did not occur to Elizabeth. Madame le Claire's choice of expression
sounded like the announcement that Florian was a prince just throwing
off his incognito. The subtle sophistry of this way of putting it
found grateful harborage in Elizabeth's hungry soul. For a moment she
felt comforted. Then came back the thought that, after all, she had
found out nothing of the matters she had come to search out.

"It is very strange,