  The geometric phase for a pure quantal state undergoing an arbitrary
evolution is a ``memory'' of the geometry of the path in the projective Hilbert
space of the system. We find that Uhlmann's geometric phase for a mixed quantal
state undergoing unitary evolution not only depends on the geometry of the path
of the system alone but also on a constrained bi-local unitary evolution of the
purified entangled state. We analyze this in general, illustrate it for the
qubit case, and propose an experiment to test this effect. We also show that
the mixed state geometric phase proposed recently in the context of
interferometry requires uni-local transformations and is therefore essentially
a property of the system alone.
