"'When I returned from my interview with you and Fran von Berkow, I went at once to my patient, who had in the meantime taken a walk at my request. He had been to the woods in company with his visitor. "'At the first glance I felt convinced that something extraordinary had happened to him. He was walking up and down in great excitement. As soon as he saw me he paused and said: "What do you think of a theory, doctor, which has never been tried practically?" "Not much!" I replied; "but why do you ask?" "Oh, a thought occurred to me to-night, which lies so near, so near, that I cannot understand why it never occurred to me before." I asked him to explain. "I cannot do that now," he said, "but I will certainly do it as soon as I am able." I had to be content with his promise, for it was useless for me to press him further. I hoped to learn more about it from Doctor Stein. He had left the same night, "on account of pressing business," as he wrote me the next day in a little note from one of the nearest stations. What had happened between him and Berger remained a secret for me; I only learnt from others that they had been seen that night in a waggoner's inn, where they had been eating and drinking with rope-dancers, who happened to be in the place, and who had created quite a sensation there, less by their tricks than'"--Oldenburg's voice began to tremble a little--"'by a beautiful gypsy woman with a still more beautiful child. Berger was very quiet and taciturn the whole of the next day. I left him quite to himself, for I did not wish in any way to interfere with the crisis which was evidently taking place. He had from the beginning been free to go and come as he chose. It did not strike the waiters, therefore, nor the gate-keeper, as strange, when he went out of the asylum at seven o'clock in the morning of the seventh day--it was the day on which Frau von B. left. But this time he did not return during the day nor at night, as he usually did, nor on the following day. He had disappeared.