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."