From her one can learn nothing of her past. On the contrary, she is at great pains to avoid all questions on this subject. Only gradually, as her health improves and the duration of her stay here lengthens, does the patient become more confidential and frank. She has never read books and papers here, and has written nothing. She has, however, followed with interest, when accounts of current events were read out to her.
To questions relating to her past she gives slow and hesitating answers, considers for a long time with a strained expression on her face, and finds difficulty in calling to mind the names of persons and places. Afther a very long time, she ceased completely to be suspicious of me, and, when occasion arose, she told me without hesitation about her early life; it is better to approach her by means of indirect questions, since, when direct questions are put to her, one always notices the anxious and searching expression on her face, and receives the reply: "I know no more, it is trying to me, I have forgotten everything, I am of no more use in the world because my memory has suffered so." Then again, she once told me, during the course of our converstaion, that it was terrible, when she had gone to such great trouble to forget all the horrible things which she had experienced, that somebody should come and revive everything, and make her so sad and despondent again. The patient, when she was feeling better, sometimes told those whom she knew well about her former life in Tsarskoe Selo, about childish pranks, about summer travels in the Crimea, about sea-voyages in the yacht Standard among the Finnish islands, the damage once suffered by the yacht, about her favourite dog, and also about the illness of her brother. Other things she spoke about were: her flight through Russia in a peasant wagon, the treatment of the injuries to ther head by means of wet applications, her stay in Rumania, the journey to Germany, her attempted suidcide through despair, the time spent by her in the various hospitals, and, finally, she reported certain facts relating to Dalldorf, which, so far as I could judge and was able to verify, were absolutely true.
(continued}
