far she had gone through all the
familiar process of question and answer with success, but this was not
all. She knew that if, when he awoke, the name he loved still remained
in his memory, the result would not be accomplished. She must
produce entire forgetfulness, and to do this, she must wipe out every
association, one by one. She gathered her strength during a short pause.
She was greatly encouraged by the fact that the acknowledgment of the
delusion had been followed by no convulsive reaction in the body. She
was on the very verge of a complete triumph, and the concentration of
her will during a few moments longer might win the battle.

She could not have chosen a spot better suited for her purpose. Within
five minutes' walk of streets in which throngs of people were moving
about, the scene which surrounded her was desolate and almost wild. The
unfinished building loomed like a ruin behind her; the rough hewn blocks
lay like boulders in a stony desert; the broad gray ice lay like a floor
of lustreless iron before her under the uncertain starlight. Only afar
off, high up in the mighty Hradschin, lamps gleamed here and there from
the windows, the distant evidences of human life. All was still. Even
the steely ring of the skates had ceased.

"And so," she continued, presently, "this man's whole life has been a
delusion, ever since he began to fancy in the fever of an illness that
he loved a certain woman. Is this clear to you, my Mind?"

"It is quite clear," answered the muffled voice.

"He was so utterly mad that he even gave that woman a name--a name, when
she had never existed except in his imagination."

"Except in his imagination," repeated the sleeper, without resistance.

"He called her Beatrice. The name was suggested to him because he had
fallen ill in a city of the South where a woman called Beatrice
once lived and was loved by a great poet. That was the train of
self-suggestion in his delirium. Mind, do you understand?"

"He suggested to himself the name in his illness."

"In the same way that he suggested to himself the existence of the woman
whom he afterwards believed he loved?"

"In exactly the same way."

"It was all a curious and very interesting case of auto-hypnotic
suggestion. It made him very mad. He is now cured of it. Do you see that
he is cured?"

The sleeper gave no answer. The stiffened limbs did not move, indeed,
nor did the glazed eyes reflect the starlight. But he gave no answ