"Doctor," she cried, "the strangest, the most inexplicable thing has happened to me! This morning, after breakfast, I went up-stairs, intending to lie down for a time, as I felt so utterly exhausted. I think I fell asleep, but am not sure. I do know, though, that two hours afterward I found myself standing in the post-office, about to mail to you a letter which I am certain I did not write, but which is plainly in my handwriting. It is such a queer letter, too, for it speaks of matters of which I know nothing, and even refers to me as though I were somebody else, and somebody else were I. What does this mean? What does it mean?" And, in a day or so, she had an even stranger story to relate. "Yesterday afternoon," she said, "I went for a walk, not because I wanted to, but because you had told me that I ought to take some exercise. I returned home about four o'clock, and went straight to my room. I remember nothing of what then happened until, in the evening, I suddenly became aware that I was at a gay dinner party, drinking wine--which is contrary to my principles--and, what was far worse, smoking a cigarette. Never in my life had I done such a thing, and my humiliation at the discovery was deep and keen. "I assure you, on my honor, that I have not the least recollection of accepting an invitation to dine out, of dressing for dinner, or of leaving the house to attend the party. Everything is a blank to me from the moment I went to my room, in the afternoon, until I came to my senses, several hours afterward, to find a lively group about me, a wineglass at my plate, and a half-smoked cigarette in my fingers. Tell me, Doctor Prince, am I going insane?" The physician hastened to reassure her, but nevertheless he felt seriously alarmed. It was evident that she was in a thoroughly dissociated condition, and that she had become, so to speak, a battleground on which was to be fought out the weirdest and most uncanny of conflicts--a duel between two separate selves for absolute supremacy in the use of the organs of her body. Further, it soon developed that the advantage would lie with the secondary self--which Doctor Prince called her B self--because, although her ordinary, or A self, suffered from amnesia, or loss of memory, regarding her actions when in the B state, the B self had a memory extending over both states. The mental agony growing out of this recurring forgetfulness on A's part may readily be imagined. As the patient herself has since expressed it, in an autobiographical account written at Doctor Prince's request:[44] [44] This autobiographical account was first published in the _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_. Afterwards it was brought out in book form by Richard G. Badger, the Boston publisher, under the title, "My Life as a Dissociated Personality," and with an introduction by Doctor Prince. It is an account well worth reading by all students of psychology.