absurd!" Corbario was glad to find
that the Superintendent held such a strong opinion. "It is not Marcello.
The nose is not the same, and the expression of the mouth is quite
different."

He said these things with conviction, but he was not deceived. He knew
that Marcello Consalvi was living and that he had seen him, risen from
the dead, and apparently likely to remain among the living for some
time. The first awful moment of anxiety was past, it was true, and
Folco was able to think more connectedly than he had since he had
received the telegram recalling him from Paris; but there was to be
another. The doctors said that his memory would return--what would he
remember? It would come back, beginning, most probably, at the very
moment in which it had been interrupted. For one instant he would fancy
that he saw again what he had seen then. What had he seen? That was the
question. Had he seen anything but the sand, the scrubby bushes, and the
trees round the cottage in the distance? Had he heard anything but the
howling of the southwest gale and the thundering of the big surf over
the bar and up the beach? The injury was at the back of his head, but it
was a little on one side. Had he been in the act of turning? Had he
turned far enough to see before the blow had extinguished memory? How
far was the sudden going out of thought really instantaneous? What
fraction of a second intervened between full life and what was so like
death? How long did it take a man to look round quickly? Much less than
a second, surely! Without effort or hurry a man could turn his head all
the way from left to right, so as to look over each shoulder
alternately, while a second pendulum swung once. A second was a much
longer time than most people realised. Instruments made for scientific
photography could be made to expose the plate not more than
one-thousandth of a second. Corbario knew that, and wondered whether a
man's eye could receive any impression in so short a time. He shuddered
when he thought that it might be possible.

The question was to be answered sooner than he expected. The doctors had
reported that a week must pass before Marcello would be strong enough to
undergo the operation, but he improved so quickly after he reached the
hospital that it seemed useless to wait. It was not considered to be a
very dangerous operation, nor one which weakened the patient much.

Regina was not allowed to be present, and when Marcello had been whee