i--"And
always the same. 'THERE SHALL BE NO MORE WARS! THERE CAN BE NONE! I SAY
IT!--_I_ ONLY! IT IS MY GREAT SECRET! _I_ AM MASTER OF THE WORLD!' Poor
devil! What a 'master of the world' is there!"

Morgana shuddered as with cold, shading her eyes from the radiant
sunshine.

"Does he say nothing else?" she murmured--"Is there no name--no
place--that he seems to remember?"

"He remembers nothing--he knows nothing"--answered Ardini--"He does not
even realize me as a man--I might be a fish or a serpent for all his
comprehension. One glance at his moveless eyes is enough to prove that.
They are like pebbles in his head--without cognisance or expression. He
mutters the words 'Great Secret' over and over again, and tacks it on
to the other phrase of 'No more wars' in a semi-conscious sort of
gabble,--this is, of course, the disordered action of the brain working
to catch up and join together hopelessly severed fragments."

Morgana lifted her sea-blue eyes and looked with grave appeal into the
severely intellectual, half-frowning face of the great Professor.

"Is there no hope of an ultimate recovery?" she asked--"With time and
rest and the best of unceasing care, might not this poor brain right
itself?"

"Medically and scientifically speaking, there is no hope,--none
whatever"--he replied--"Though of course we all know that Nature's
remedial methods are inexhaustible, and often, to the wisest of us,
seem miraculous, because as yet we do not understand one tithe of her
processes. But--in this case,--this strange and terrible case"--and he
uttered the words with marked gravity,--"It is Nature's own force that
has wrought the damage,--some powerful influence which the man has been
testing has proved too much for him--and it has taken its own
vengeance."

Morgana heard this with strained interest and attention.

"Tell me just what you mean,"--she said--"There is something you do not
quite express--or else I am too slow to understand--"

Ardini took a few paces up and down the loggia and then halted, facing
her in the attitude of a teacher preparing to instruct a pupil.

"Signora,"--he said--"When you began to correspond with me some years
ago from America, I realised that I was in touch with a highly
intelligent and cultivated mind. I took you to be many years older than
you are, with a ripe scientific experience. I find you young,
beautiful, and pathetic in the pure womanliness of your nature, which
must be perpetu