CONTRARY to his usual custom, Dr. Taverner did not insist on seeing his patient alone, for the sufficient reason that no information could be extracted from her. It was the mother, a Mrs. Cailey, we turned for the case history, and she, poor anxious woman, gave us such scanty details as an onlooker might observe; but of the viewpoint and feelings of the patient we learned nothing, for there was nothing to learn.

She sat before us in the big leather armchair; her body was a tenement for the soul of a princess, but it was, alas, untenanted. The fine dark eyes, utterly expressionless, looked into space while we discussed her as if she had been an inanimate object, which practically she was.

“She was never like ordinary children,” said the mother. “When they put her in my arms after she was born she looked up at me with the most extraordinary expression in her eye; they were not a baby’s at all, Doctor, they were the eyes of a woman, and an experienced woman too. She didn’t cry, she never made a sound, but she looked as if she had all the troubles of the world upon her shoulders. That baby’s face was a tragedy; perhaps she knew what was coming.”

“Perhaps she did,” said Taverner.

“In a few hours, however,” continued the mother, “she looked quite like an ordinary baby; but from that time to this she has never changed, except in her body.”

We looked at the girl in the chair, and she gazed back at us with the unblinking stolidity of a very young infant.

“We have taken her to everybody we could hear of, but they all say the same—that it is a hopeless case of mental deficiency; but when we heard of you, we thought you might say something different. We knew that your methods were not like those of most doctors. It does seem strange that it should be impossible