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 wheeled out of his room, already under ether, she went and stood before the window, pressing down her clasped hands upon the marble sill with all her might, and resting her forehead against the green slats of the blind.  She did not move from this position while the nurse made Marcello’s bed ready to receive him on his return.  It was long to wait.  The great clock in the square struck eleven some time after he had been taken away, then the quarter, then half-past.

Regina felt the blood slowly sinking to her heart.  She would have given anything to move now, but she could not stir hand or foot; she was cold, yet somehow she could not even shiver; that would have been a relief; any motion, any shock, any violent pain would have been a thousand times better than the marble stillness that was like a spell.

Far away on the Janiculum Folco Corbario sat in his splendid library alone, with strained eyes, waiting for the call of the telephone that stood on the polished table at his elbow.  He, too, was motionless, and longed for release as he had never thought he could long for anything.  A still unlighted cigar was almost bitten through by his sharp front teeth; every faculty was tense; and yet it was as if his brain had stopped thinking at the point where expectation had begun.  He could not think now, he could only suffer.  If the operation were successful there would be more suffering, doubt still more torturing, suspense more agonising still.