He could regret the acts of that man and he could seek to atone for them, but he felt no personal remorse. "He was not I," would have reasoned the mind of Berselius; "those acts were not my acts, because _now I could not commit them_," so he would have reasoned had he reasoned on the matter at all. But he did not. In that wild outburst by the Silent Pools the ego had screamed aloud, raving against itself, raving against the trick that fate had played it, by making it the slave of two personalities, and then torturing it by showing it the acts of the old personality through the eyes of the new.
When the brain fever had passed, it awoke untroubled; the junction had been effected, the new Berselius was It, and all the acts of the old Berselius were foreign to it and far away.
It is thus the man who gets religion feels when the great change comes on his brain. After the brain-storm and the agony of new birth comes the peace and the feeling that he is "another man." He feels that all his sins are washed away; in other words, he has lost all sense of responsibility for the crimes he committed in the old life, he has cast them off like an old suit of clothes. The old man is dead. Ah, but is he? Can you atone for your vices by losing your smell and taste for vice, and slip out of your debt for crime by becoming another man?
The case of Berselius stirs one to ask the question, which is more especially interesting as it is prompted by a case not unique but almost typical.
The interesting point in Berselius's case lay in the question as to whether his change of mind was initiated by the injury received in the elephant country or by the shock at the Silent Pools. In other words, was it due to some mechanical pressure on the brain produced by the accident, or was it due to "repentance" on seeing suddenly unveiled the hideous drama in which he had taken part?
At the end of the fourth week Berselius was able to leave his bed, and every day now marked a steady improvement in strength.
Not a word about the past did he say, not a question did he ask, and what surprised Adams especially, not a question did he put about Meeus, till one day in the middle of the fifth week.
Berselius was seated in one of the arm chairs of the sitting room when he suddenly raised his head.