"I have read your mind before. I can read it now."
"You can—not."
He threw himself back in his berth and strove to concentrate his mind. For nearly five minutes he lay quite still, and then he said gently:
"You are right. Have you, then, a higher power than I?"
"No; a lower!"
"A lower! What do you mean?"
"I mean that I have merely paralysed your brain—that for many months to come it will not be restored to its normal power—that it will never reach its normal power again unless I choose."
"Then all is lost—lost—lost!" he wailed out. "The end is as far off, and the journey as long, and the way as hard, as if I had never striven. And the tribute of human tears will be exacted to the uttermost. My life has been in vain!"
The absolute agony in his voice, the note of almost superhuman suffering and despair, was so intense, that, without thinking of what it was this man was grieving over, I found myself saying soothingly:
"No, no! Nothing is lost. It is only your own overstrained nervous system which sends these fantastic nightmares to your brain. I will soon make you all right if you will listen to reason."