This dislocation of memory is a variety of aphasia known as amnesia, and when the memory is recurrently lost and restored it is an “alternating personality.”  The psychical researchers and psychologists have reported many cases of alternating personality.  Studious efforts are being made to understand and to explain the strange type of mental phenomena exhibited in these cases, but no one has as yet given a final, clear, and comprehensive explanation of them.  Such cases are by no means always connected with disappearances, but the variety known as the ambulatory type, where the patient suddenly loses all knowledge of his own identity and of his past and takes himself off, leaving no trace or clue, is the variety which the present case calls to popular attention.

Then followed a list of a dozen or so interesting cases of persons who had vanished completely and had, some several days and some even years later, suddenly “awakened” to their first personality, returned, and taken up the thread of that personality where it had been broken.

To Kennedy’s inquiry I was about to reply that I recalled the conversation distinctly, when Mr. Gilbert shot an inquiring glance from beneath his bushy eyebrows, quickly shifting from my face to Kennedy’s, and asked, “And what was your conclusion—­what do you think of the case?  Is it aphasia or amnesia, or whatever the doctors call it, and do you think she is wandering about somewhere unable to recover her real personality?”

“I should like to have all the facts at first hand before venturing an opinion,” Craig replied with precisely that shade of hesitancy that might reassure the anxious father and mother, without raising a false hope.

Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert exchanged glances, the purport of which was that she desired him to tell the story.

“It was day before yesterday,” began Mr. Gilbert, gently touching his wife’s trembling hand that sought his arm as he began rehearsing the tragedy that had cast its shadow across their lives, “Thursday, that Georgette—­er—­since we have heard of Georgette.”  His voice faltered a bit, but he proceeded:  “As you know, she was last seen walking on Fifth Avenue.  The police have traced her since she left home that morning.  It is known that she went first to the public library, then that she stopped at a department store on the avenue, where she made a small purchase which she had charged to our family account, and finally that she went to a large book-store.  Then—­that is the last.”

Mrs. Gilbert sighed, and buried her face in a lace handkerchief as her shoulders shook convulsively.

“Yes, I have read that,” repeated Kennedy gently, though with manifest eagerness to get down to facts that might prove more illuminating.  “I think I need hardly impress upon you the advantage of complete frankness, the fact that anything you may tell me is of a much more confidential nature than if it were told to the police.  Er—­r, had Miss Gilbert any—­love affair, any trouble of such a nature that it might have preyed on her mind?”