Sally, too, who knows the inmost soul of Miss Beauchamp, says she changed after that night.

So it follows that the Miss Beauchamp who has been the object of this study, has been educated in college, and been the solicitude of many friends, is not, properly speaking, the original Miss B., but a modified personality rightfully designated as B. I.

On the afternoon of June 7th, 1899, six years later, Miss Beauchamp was in my office. She was not in any way noticeably different from her usual condition. After leaving the office she went to the public library, as was her custom. In the library she met a messenger, who quite unexpectedly brought her a letter, and this letter was from the person whom we have agreed to call Jones. The letter was couched in almost the same language as was his conversation at the time of the hospital incident in 1893. It threw her into a very highly-excited state, and she actually saw a vision: - the scene outside the hospital with herself and Jones as the actors - and actually saw herself and him, and saw the flashes of lightning and heard the thunder, and through it all his voice. Under the influence of this excitement she went to the reading-room, and there had an illusion. In the evening newspaper she saw my name printed in large letters in the headlines, in place of that which was really printed, the name of a relative of mine who had died that morning. Still further upset by this, she made her way home.

It was not until many months after this that I learned of this scene, or of the hospital episode in 1893, so that it was long before I found the key to the sequel. (As will appear, if I had known of it all, I should have been saved many hours and much labour in the attempt to understand the later psychical developments.) All I knew then was this. After returning from the library, Miss Beauchamp was in such a nervous state that I was soon sent for. On arrival I found her in a very nervous, highly-excited condition. She was unable to sit still; her limbs were in more or less constant motion. Her condition was one that I had frequently seen after she had been exposed to emotional influences. Presently she changed completely. She became quiet, perfectly natural, talked affably, was very sociable, and, in fact, seemed to be in a condition in which I had never seen her before - more natural in many ways than I had ever seen her, quiet and calm, and apparently in a perfectly healthy state of body and mind; but, to my surprise, I found that she did not know me.

She said I was not Dr. Prince, and when I insisted that I was, she laughed and took it just as if I was talking nonsense to her - if I insisted that I was, well, I could have it so, but she knew I wasn't. She said that I was perfectly reckless in coming, that I ought not to have come, and then I discovered that she was under the impression, in fact insisted, that I had come in through the window. As we were in the fourth story, it was plain that she was also under an illusion as to the place where we were. The contrast of these illusions with her normality in other respects was striking. The scene lasted some little time. Finally I showed her my name in my watch. She underwent a slight mental shock. A change came over her. She passed through a brief period of confusion and then became herself again, but without any recollection of what had occurred. The essential points I would emphasise are that - besides appearing perfectly normal - she insisted that I was Jones, imagined we were somewhere else, that I had come in through the window, that I ran great risks in coming because of the publicity, that I ought not to have done it, and that it was a foolish thing to have done.

Being ignorant of the preceding events just narrated, it was not clear at first whether this was simply Miss B. under an illusion, or whether it was a new personality similarly affected.

To cut a long story short (for it took a long time to unravel the mystery), it turned out to be a new personality, who had at this moment waked up, and had gone back six years in her life, and now imagined it was the same night and she was in the same room in the hospital where she had seen that face in the window in 1893. The impetus to her awakening had evidently been given by the shock of the letter and the vision in the library a few hours before; awakening, she went on with her life where she had left off, with the last vestige of memory, which was seeing Jones at the window. Under the influence of this suggestion (she and B. I. are very suggestible) she mistook me for Jones, and, having seen him, as she thought, a moment before (really six years previously) at the window, inferred I had entered by that means. The impropriety and unwisdom of it all was a natural thought. This new personality became known in these studies as B. IV.

The next time I saw B. IV. she was free from all illusion, but I was struck by her formal and distant attitude. It soon transpired that she did not know me or the consulting-room, where B. I. had been time and again. In fact, she knew absolutely nothing of the events of the past six years, knew nothing of B. I.'s life in college, knew nothing of the friends whom B. I. had made during these years, knew nothing of me, knew nothing of any of these events whatsoever, nor later, after she was domiciled as one of the Beauchamp family, did she know anything about the present times when B. I. or Sally was present. From this it follows that she knew, and continued to know, nothing of either B. I. or Sally, or that there ever were such personalities.

It took her a long time to accommodate herself to the new order of things and to take up the thread of events. Like Rip Van Winkle, she did not know that the world had moved since she went to sleep. Sally, who was invaluable as an informer, used to report that she seemed to live in the past, and used to speak to people as if it was still 1893. So the family now was increased by one, and there were three who kept changing with one another.