A brilliant morning broke over the flower-filled gardens of the Palazzo d'Oro, and the sea, stretched out in a wide radiance of purest blue shimmered with millions of tiny silver ripples brushed on its surface by a light wind as delicate as a bird's wing. Morgana stood in her rose-marble loggia, looking with a pathetic wistfulness at the beauty of the scene, and beside her stood Marco Ardini, scientist, surgeon and physician, looking also, but scarcely seeing, his whole thought being concentrated on the "case" with which he had been dealing.
"It is exactly as I at first told you,"--he said--"The man is strong in muscle and sinew,--but his brain is ruined. It can no longer control or command the body's mechanism,--therefore the body is practically useless. Power of volition is gone,--the poor fellow will never be able to walk again or to lift a hand. A certain faculty of speech is left,--but even this is limited to a few words which are evidently the result of the last prevailing thoughts impressed on the brain-cells. It is possible he will repeat those words thousands of times!--the oftener he repeats them the more he will like to say them."
"What are they?" Morgana asked in a tone of sorrow and compassion.
"Strange enough for a man in his condition"--replied Ardini--"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?"