“She is quite right,” he said.  “His memory is gone, and we shall only disturb him.  You tell me that the doctors have found a very slight depression in his head, as if from a blow.  Do you think—­but it will annoy him—­I had better not.”

“What do you mean?” asked the other, as he hesitated.

“It is such a strange case that I should like to see just where it is, out of pure curiosity.”

“It is here,” said Regina, answering, and setting the tip of one straight finger against her own head to point out the place.

“Oh, at the back, on the right side?  I see—­yes—­thank you.  A little on one side, you say?”

“Here,” repeated Regina, turning so that Corbario could see exactly where the end of her finger touched her hair.

“To think that so slight an injury may have permanently affected the young man’s memory!” Corbario appeared much impressed.  “Well,” he continued, speaking to Regina, “if we ever find out who he is, his relations owe you a debt of gratitude quite beyond all payment.”

“Do you think I want to be paid?” asked Regina, and in her indignation she turned away and walked to the window.

But Marcello called her back.

“Please, Regina—­please tell them to go away!” he pleaded.

Corbario nodded to the Superintendent, and they left the room.

“There is certainly a strong resemblance,” said Folco, when they were outside, “but it really cannot be my poor Marcello.  I was almost too much affected by the thought of seeing him again to control myself when we first entered, but when I came near I felt nothing.  It is not he, I am sure.  I loved him as if he were my own son; I brought him up; we were always together.  It is not possible that I should be mistaken.”

“No,” replied the Superintendent, “I should hardly think it possible.  Besides, from what the girl has told me, I am quite sure that he lay ill near Tivoli.  How is it possible that he should have got there, all the way from the Roman shore?”

“And with a fractured skull!  It is 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