"Smithson?" I suggested. "Smithfield? Smithaven?" She fairly hissed with frustration in her hopeless effort to remember. "I don't know," she shrugged at last in defeat.

On impulse I rattled off perhaps two or three dozen women's first names, but none produced a similar feeling of familiarity, so Miss Smith she became. I found the puzzle of her identity intruding continually upon my thoughts as I made my professional rounds that afternoon. If indeed her loss of memory was hysteric and not organic in origin, then the possibility of inducing its return became feasible. The vague feeling of recognition and non-recognition to which she admitted suggested the hope that it might not be buried so very far below the surface after all. Might not a familiar stimulus bring some image glimmering up through the deep chill water in which it had been drowned? The idea was an exciting one. The only problem lay in guessing what might be a familiar stimulus to her. I thought back over what Holmes had said during our first meeting with her, which now seemed much longer ago than yesterday morning. On a sudden bright impulse I stopped in at a pawnshop on my way home and made a purchase.

Because she seemed so improved, and also to continue my observations, I had Miss Smith come down and attend supper with my wife and myself. It was not a great success, for my wife was rather nervous of her and so unable to help ease her out of her withdrawn silence, but nonetheless it produced a few new pieces of data. Her table manners were ladylike enough, suggesting that in spite of my impression of a certain roughness about her, she was not from the lower social classes. She held her knife and fork in the American manner, confirming Holmes's hypothesis of a principally American origin. She also continued to refuse wine or spirits in any form.

After dinner we withdrew to the drawing room.

"Do you play cards, Miss Smith?" inquired my wife after the initial bustle of getting settled had resolved into a silence whose length threatened to become uncomfortable.