st and truest friends you
ever had. She was your bridesmaid, don't you remember?"

Helen shook her head weakly.

"I have been married, then?" she asked.

"You were married to James Felderson. Can't you remember him?" I
begged.

Again she shook her head. "No. It's all gone." She thought hard a
minute, then she asked: "He is dead--my husband?"

"Yes," I muttered, trying to keep the tears back, "he was killed in the
same accident--"

"What was he like?" she interrupted.

"Helen, think!" I cried, fighting blindly against the terror that was
choking me. "Little sister. You must think--_hard_. Jim. Don't you
remember big handsome Jim?" I snatched my watch from my pocket and
opened the back, where I carried a small picture of Jim, taken years
before. I had put it there in boyish admiration when I first knew him.
I held it up in front of her eyes. "You must remember him, Helen!"

She gazed at the picture with eyes in which there were tears and a
little fright, but not a spark of recognition. Fearing that I was
over-exciting her, I sat close to her and drew as best I could a mental
picture of Jim. I was only half-way through the recital when the door
opened and Doctor Forbes came in.

"The ten minutes are up, Mr. Thompson."

I stooped and kissed Helen.

"Promise that you'll come back to-morrow," she whispered.

I promised and hurried from the room. Outside the doctor awaited me
questioningly.

"Her memory is completely gone!" I gasped.

The doctor patted me on the shoulder sympathetically.

"We suspected that day before yesterday. I would have told you before,
but thought that your questions might start her memory functioning."

I gripped him by both arms. "But, Doctor, can nothing be done? Will
she have to--have to begin all over again?"

"I can't say yet. There may be some pressure there still. We'll have
to wait until she is much stronger before we can tell."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

WE PLAN THE DEFENSE

Helen's loss of memory was the last straw. The shock of finding her
unable to remember the most familiar things was bad enough from a
purely physical standpoint, but when I realized how completely it swept
away all my plans for Helen's defense, how it fastened the guilt on her
poor shoulders, I felt that our case was hopeless indeed.

I drove to the offices of Simpson and Todd and was lucky enough to find
both of them in. Simpson, a slender man with steel-gray hair and eyes,
a