Chapter ELEVEN: I

WE found out, June and I, by the sheerest accident. At the end of that week she rang me up and asked if I would care to go with her to Hindhead. Some other engagement had fallen through at the last minute, and she had an afternoon and evening unexpectedly free. "We can take the two-seater car," she said, "and we'll just stop at the hotel for tea and then come back."

We went. The sunny ride through Richmond and Guildford and over the Hog's Back (the high, windy way that June and I always preferred) was especially entrancing on that Saturday afternoon. I don't think either of us was very much surprised to find Terry out when we reached the hotel. On such a day of sunshine and cool wind there would have been something wrong with him if he'd been in. Taplow told us that he'd gone for a walk and hadn't left word when he'd return. And then, with the curious Taplow mixture of frankness and discretion, came the remark: "As a matter of fact, sir, Mrs. Severn called this morning, and they went out together."

_As a matter of fact_! To him, perhaps, it was only that--a fact that might possibly interest us, or possibly might not. His casualness, anyhow, helped us to curb our own astonishment. I managed to order tea, and then June and I sat together in the little window alcove of the sitting-room, each waiting for the other to express the surprise we felt. But curiously, perhaps, neither of us did. We both pretended that Helen's visit was nothing out of the ordinary; Taplow had set us the example. When he brought our tea he said: "They'll have done quite a tidy bit of walking, I daresay, sir. Lovely weather for walking--not too hot, as you might say, sir, and not too cold either."

All June said when he had gone was: "Mother hates walking."

We had tea and tried to sustain a conversation. If this manuscript were an autobiography I should devote whole pages to the thoughts and fears that invaded my mind during that meal; and yet I believe I was quite eloquent about topics that now I can't even remember. There's a sort of talk that is especially copious when one is thinking all the time about something else.

After tea I said: "Shall we wait?"--and she answered quietly: "We'll wait--for a little while." So we waited. It was already half-past six, but June was used to night-driving and there was no particular hurry. The whole year has nothing lovelier, perhaps, than those early days of May, when twilight is like the perfect curtain descending on the perfect play. And yet to me, at any rate, the passing of that afternoon seemed ominous; for we were still waiting, and each minute gave us less to talk about and more to think about. Clouds rolled up and brought the dusk suddenly, and then came heavy, beating rain. When Taplow entered to light the swinging oil-lamps the sad yellow glow peered into all the corners of the room as if to show up rather than dispel the darkness. "This ought to bring 'em back pretty quick," he said, as he closed the windows against the downpour.

Ten minutes after that they came....

II

They came like children, laughing and scampering; they had been running till they were out of breath, and both were wet to the skin. The rain gleamed on their flushed cheeks and shining eyes, and in that small lamp-lit room they looked like wild animals brought to bay. They hardly saw us at first.

Then Helen suddenly cried "Look!"--and pointed to us.

Somehow I felt that it was June or I who ought rather to have cried "Look!" I broke the awkward silence by saying that we had arrived by car not long before.

And Helen said: "Really? Did you come over the Hog's Back or through Godalming?"

"Over the Hog's Back," I answered; and she went on: "I think I prefer the other route. Godalming is such a quaint little town."

The rain was dripping off the brim of her hat and she remarked laughingly that if Mrs. Taplow could lend her some clothes she thought she had better change. She smiled at Terry as she went out of the room.

"_You're_ wet through, too," I said, when she had gone, but he merely shrugged his shoulders and answered: "Oh, yes, I'll go up and change in a minute. I must talk to you first, though. I'm ever so glad you've come, but why on earth didn't you send me a card as you usually do?"

I explained the circumstances, but he still seemed inclined to protest. "If only Helen and I had known," he said, "we could have made up a party with the car and had a picnic somewhere."

"Perhaps it will do another time," I said conventionally.

He nodded with eagerness. Then he dragged a chair in front of the two of us. "D'you know," he went on, leaning forward and talking rather more to June than to me, "I've been having a great time to-day. Your mother and I have been looking all round the district for houses--or else for a good site to build a house on. We haven't quite made our choice, but we've got several ideas...." He added, with shy gentleness: "Perhaps you're surprised that I call her 'Helen?' You see, she and I are very old friends."

June spoke then for the first time since he had come in. "_That_ doesn't surprise me," she said quietly. "But the house business does. Do you mean that my mother's thinking of coming to live out here?"

"Yes.... That's it.... Isn't it splendid?"

He went on to explain. Apparently, in the beginning, it had been one of my ideas, though I had no recollection of it. Briefly, the suggestion had been that since it was no longer necessary for Severn to live within easy reach of town, the Hampstead house might be exchanged for one further out. As Terry summed it up: "It's really absurd to live near a Tube station when you have the chance of being in the heart of the loveliest county in England."

"Is that Helen's opinion?" I asked.

He smiled. "She's still rather a devotee of the town, but she sees the advantages of living out here. As a matter of fact, I think to-day has converted her. It's been her first day in the country for years."

He went on to tell us, with careful and slightly boring accuracy, exactly where they had been. Then he described several houses that were more than suitable except for their initial disadvantage of being occupied by somebody else. There were one or two good sites, however, and perhaps in the long run it would be more satisfactory to plan and build a house according to taste. "It's great fun," he said, "climbing lots of hills and wondering what houses would be like on the top."

Then Helen came in attired in the rather scarecrow clothes that Mrs. Taplow had lent her. Terry laughed heartily at her appearance, and then left to change out of his own drenched clothes. We were left with Helen.

I'm setting down all this as simply and accurately as I can. I'm reporting rather than describing what happened. It's easier, especially when I come to Helen, for she was very puzzling that night. She seemed younger, happier, triumphant, even; and yet, in some odd way, terrified. She talked copiously and irrelevantly until Terry joined us, and then was suddenly silent. We had supper, and during the meal it was suggested that she should return with June in the car, and that I should stay at the hotel overnight. The plan suited me, and I was glad to agree to it.

By this time the rain had stopped and the sky become clear. Indeed, it was bright moonlight when Terry and I stood in the roadway to give a final wave to the disappearing car. Then we strolled up the cool rain-scented lane and talked.

III

It had all happened so suddenly--to him even more than to me. Crammed into a single phrase, it was Helen's return to his life, and I think he wanted to talk about it quite as much as I did.

It had astonished him, he admitted; for he had never believed it possible that they could be friends again. And especially after the trouncing she gave him about the Karelsky business....

"She apologized for that," he told me. "Not that I wanted her to--a great deal of what she said, from her point of view, was quite true.... But she did apologize, anyway. And then, of course, we had the job of house-hunting."

I asked him if he had had any idea that she was coming, and he answered: "Not the slightest. I was reading in the garden when she suddenly came in by the side gate. She was looking for Taplow--to ask him about the houses, I suppose."

"But she knew you were staying at the hotel."

"Oh, yes, but it wasn't me she came to see. But for Taplow being out, and her looking for him, we might never have met."

"Did she suggest that you should show her round the district?"

He said: "I think we both suggested it together. She said she didn't mind walking, and so naturally...."

After a pause he went on: "I tell you candidly--I didn't think either of us could do it.... Do you remember the other day we were talking about her and I told you she was different? Well, she _is_ different, in one way, but in another way she's just the same--just the same as if--as if nothing had ever happened.... Do you know what I mean?"

I knew what he meant.

Then he talked enthusiastically about the time when she and Severn would live idyllically on the slopes of one of those Surrey hills. He, of course, might be working hundreds--perhaps thousands of miles away, but it would be pleasant to think of the two of them in such delightful surroundings. They were lucky to have plenty of money; they could build just where they liked and how they liked. And we--he and I--would perhaps visit them from time to time.

What could I say to him? Could I tell him the fear that was in my mind? Could I warn him that the danger that had existed eight years before was still a danger? ...

Not then.... Not, at any rate, till the danger was more evident, till I had proof as well as surmising. I said merely: "Well, I hope you showed her some good places. She ought to be able to find something or other if money isn't much of a consideration."

And he answered smiling: "Oh, yes, we shall find something. She's coming again next week...."

IV

He was so frank about it. And so was Helen. The house business (despite my first uneasy fear to the contrary) proved to be absolutely genuine. June, it was true, hadn't known about it, but Severn had, for it was he who had actually suggested the Hindhead district. So there was nothing intrinsically curious in her visits of exploration.

The ordinary work-a-day person with limited money and limited leisure has no idea of the extraordinary difficulties that confront people with unlimited quantities of both. This matter of choosing a house, for instance. When you have just so much money to spend and so much time to look round in, the chances are that you solve your housing problem quite expeditiously. Far different is the troubled lot of those whose bank balance is no curb upon the gratification of every whim. They climb to the top of high hills and wonder how a house would look from here, or from there, and whether it would be better to have it facing the sun or the prevailing winds or the river tumbling in the valley below. Then there are abstruse problems about garages and gardens and conservatories and electric light and drains and so on. Finally, there is the question of architecture. Is it to be English or classic--the Elizabethan gable or the slim Ionic pediment? ... It is all a very lengthy business, as you can well imagine.

On that second excursion to Hindhead Helen quite made up her mind that no vacant house in the district was at all suitable, and that, therefore, one would have to be built. And this, of course, meant continuing the search for a site. The site was found, if I remember rightly, on the occasion of her fourth visit, but details of aspect, location, and so on, were not settled till the ninth visit, when an architect and surveyor was in attendance.

It must have been an idyllic quest, during those long lovely days of May and June. At first the two of them walked, but walking takes up a lot of time, and besides, as June had said, Helen hated walking. So one day she came down in the big Daimler car, sent the chauffeur back by train, and taught Terry to drive. She couldn't drive herself, but she knew just enough about it to teach him, and he proved such an apt pupil that he drove her safely back to town that very night. And then the next time that the house business demanded her presence at Hindhead he called for her at the End House and there was no need of a chauffeur.

The whole thing was so frank and open and, above all, so sweetly plausible that there was no chance, even if there had been any reason, to tender warning advice. Fate, like a warm sun at noonday, was blazing down on them from a cloudless sky. Terry couldn't even wonder if her days in the country were unfair to Severn, for it was on his behalf that she was taking them. Severn, it appeared, was keen about the new house, and Helen wasn't so especially, even after Terry's strenuous efforts to make her. And how charming, how subtly reassuring was her resistance to those efforts!

He said to me one night in Taplow's garden: "The past is just a big blank--we don't mention it--it doesn't even exist for us. Forgetting isn't the right word--it's rather that we don't trouble to remember something that isn't worth remembering. We were fools, maybe, both of us--and we should be bigger fools if we discussed it now.... Besides, it's so hopelessly out-of-date. All Helen wants now is to make life happier and easier for Severn. That's why she's coming to live out here--not because she's a country-lover herself. She isn't; she's told me so quite candidly. Hyde Park, not Hindhead, is her ideal."

I asked him if he though that she and Severn were getting on better, and he answered: "I'm sure of it. She doesn't always agree with him, of course--(she didn't over that Karelsky business)--but I think she's very happy. That American fellow's coming to operate on July 19th, and she's building up great hopes about it...."

V

And June ...?

I hardly know for certain, because she said so little about her own thoughts and feelings. As a novelist, perhaps I am entitled to be omniscient, but even omniscience doesn't lead me very much further than the obvious fact that June and Helen were separated by a deep and growing antagonism. I shall never forget that night at the End House when June faced her mother with that white-hot question: "Why should you interfere?"

But after that there was never another outbreak. Maybe the antagonism sank deeper; I had the constant impression that the more June felt the less she would say; until the time came when feeling would make her almost inarticulate. Anyhow, during those long midsummer days, though I saw her frequently, Helen's name was never mentioned, and even Terry's only rarely.

We went to Hindhead quite often, and Terry was always charmingly eager to see us. Never again, after that first unexpected visit, did we meet Helen there; I think June saw to that. Usually she and Terry played tennis, or else he, with his new eagerness for motor-driving, took us out in Taplow's prehistoric Ford. With this, as with most other enthusiasms, he went vastly to extremes; one afternoon a short trip to Aldershot developed into a grand tour of three counties, ending up in a breakdown and an ignominious return by train. He was always, too, immensely keen on showing us the site of the new house and giving us full and technical details of Helen's most recent visit. Never, by a word or a gesture, did June show anything but interest, but I got so bored with climbing up the same old hill and standing in the broiling sunlight to admire the same old view, that I formed the excellent habit of staying in the car while he and June made their expeditions alone. They were usually gone about half-an-hour--just time enough for a quiet smoke and a morsel of reflection.

What sort of a game was Helen playing? I thought it over, on those and other occasions, from every possible angle, and at the end of it all I had no convictions, only suspicions as before. If, at any rate, she were playing a game at all, it was a mighty clever as well as a mighty dastardly one--the cleverest and most dastardly by far that she had ever played.... But perhaps it wasn't a game. Perhaps they were both, with blindly honest footsteps, stumbling over the old ground into the trap that time had artfully concealed.... And perhaps there wasn't even a trap. Perhaps two people who had once been lovers really _could_ meet again after a space of years and be no more than friends.... Time, at any rate, would show.

Time showed, in my opinion, when Severn obtained for Terry the offer of a job and Terry asked for a few weeks to think it over. It was a junior professorship of bacteriology in an Australian university, carrying with it a commencing salary of three hundred a year, and to me it seemed so good, in the circumstances, that Terry ought to have accepted it joyously and outright. I couldn't understand what there was to think over, and his vague replies when I talked to him about it only increased my astonishment. He admitted it was a good post. He assured me he hadn't the slightest objection to going abroad; on the contrary, he thought he would prefer it, and especially a country like Australia. Quite probably he would accept--oh, quite probably; it was just that he would prefer not to give an absolutely definite answer just then.

The matter worried me, and I had the impression that it was worrying June also. Something was worrying her, anyhow; there was a quite perceptible cloud somewhere on her horizon. One afternoon I found her lying prone in a deck-chair in Taplow's garden, and sobbing--sobbing as only people can do who aren't good at putting their feelings into words. I didn't let her see me, and went back quietly into the bar-room. Terry was there, reading a letter that the postman had just brought.

As soon as he saw he me gave a triumphant cry of delight. "It's from Helen," he said, smiling eagerly, "and she's coming down again on Thursday about the house...."

VI

That settled it. I went to Hampstead the next day.

You can imagine the mood I was in, and you can imagine, perhaps, that I hadn't any very definite plans. The weather was burningly hot, and at the Tube station, to save myself the trouble of climbing the steep hill for nothing, I rang up the End House to enquire if Helen were at home. It was she herself who answered, and asked me quite politely what I wanted. The abrupt query nonplussed me for the moment, and by the time I was stammering something about a short talk, she was telling me that she was just going out, and would it do another time?

"To-morrow?" I suggested.

She was sorry, but she was afraid to-morrow was booked up.

"The next day?"

She was sorrier than ever, but she was engaged then as well. "And on Thursday I'm going down to Hindhead.... Friday might do, if you don't mind a few others being here...."

I said it didn't matter, rang off suddenly, and walked up the hill to the house. I thought then it had been a mistake to telephone, but perhaps, after all, it wasn't. For it led to that curious meeting with her on the shaded lawn beneath the elm-trees; she was lounging in a basket-chair, reading the latest novel, and had quite obviously no more intention of going out that afternoon than I had of being tricked by her most ordinary of evasions.

She showed no embarrassment. Her smile was perfect as I crossed the lawn towards her, and I could see those summer days at Hindhead written on her face in tints of pink and brown. "Hello," she exclaimed, with casual surprise. "I thought you were in town. Didn't you telephone just now?"

"Yes, but from a call-box down the road. I was on my way here."

"But why on earth didn't you tell me?"

"Would it have made any difference?"

"Of course it would ... I wouldn't have lied about going out if I'd known you were so near. Only you said you wanted a talk, and I felt so absolutely incapable of talking that I didn't think it worth while to drag you all the way from the City."

"Nevertheless, now I'm here--if you don't mind--I _do_ want a talk with you."

"All right. Let's have some tea first." She rang a small silver hand-bell and then chattered languidly until the maid came. "Geoffrey's having tea in his study with that surgeon man from Chicago. I hate their scientific talk--that's why I came away."

I asked her if all the arrangements had been made for the operation, and she told me it was to take place the following Wednesday in a nursing-home.

"This afternoon is purely a social visit, I suppose?"

"Oh, purely social. They were discussing Abdominal Section when I left.... Why don't you go and join them? I'm sure you'd find their conversation much more enlivening than mine."

I said I would prefer hers, if she didn't object. Then the tea came, and we touched on other matters. She was very flippant and cynical, especially about the projected new house. "It's going to cost heaps of money, and when I've lived in it a fortnight I know I shall long for a flat in Dover Street.... I'd be bored with it already but for the excuse it gives me to see Terry."

That was how and where we began.

Looking back on it all now I find it difficult--impossible in fact--to remember the stages of the argument. Perhaps really this is because it wasn't an argument so much as a disconnected series of questions and answers. She was so overwhelmingly, so terrifyingly frank. It was disconcerting; it gave one a peculiar feeling of insecurity, like walking into an unknown house and finding all the doors closed but unlocked.

And also, she didn't care. That, I can see, makes for frankness. Having stormed her citadel, I was free to do as I chose; she offered not the slightest resistance. I asked her cautious questions at first, and she answered them; then I asked her bolder questions, and she answered them. She didn't care. I said: "I may as well tell you outright that I think you and Terry are both on very dangerous ground."

"I daresay we are," she answered. She took a cigarette from a dainty little gold case, and lit it with langorous nonchalance.

"You don't mind me giving you my opinion?"

"Not in the least."

"Will you take any notice of it?"

"Probably not."

"You just intend to do whatever you like?"

"Yes."

"As regards Terry?"

"Yes."

"But--Helen--what _is_ it that you're going to do?"

"I'm not certain."

"You're not going to make a fool of him again?"

That stung her out of her somnambulist calmness. She answered, with sharp passion: "Why do you say that? Why do you insult me? I didn't ask you to come here--I even tried to stop you from coming. Why _did_ you come? ... If you don't like what you're hearing, go away."

I told her quietly that I didn't like what I was hearing, but that I wasn't going away.

Then she cried out: "Stay, then. Do whatever you like--I don't care. I've made up my mind what I'm going to do, and I'll do it, right or wrong.... And if you say a word to Terry, I'll deny everything and call you a liar. _He'll_ believe me."

"You'd do _that_?"

"I'd do _anything_. I'm absolutely at the limit of unscrupulousness. When _you_ want anything badly enough--if you ever do--perhaps _you'll_ be the same...."

VII

Here's where I'm in danger of going astray. I feel I must keep on reminding myself of the circumstances--forgetting Helen herself and thinking only of the case as it would be docketed in some psychologist's bureau.... A woman, aged thirty-eight, married to a charming, clever, and wealthy man who, owing to an accident, cannot move out of his chair. Eight years ago she had an "affair" with a man seven years her junior, upsetting his career and half-ruining his life altogether. Now, while her husband passes his dull eventless days as best he can, she meets this young man and amuses herself with him again....

It all sound pretty hopeless. And yet I can hear now her words, spoken amidst the dreaming haze of that summer afternoon.... "I'm _not_ amusing myself. I'm in earnest as I've never been before. I've been in earnest ever since that night I told him the truth about Karelsky. Do you remember how wrong we all were about him? June and you thought it would do him harm to be told how he'd been swindled, and I thought it would do him good--and we were all wrong, because it just hadn't any effect on him at all! He didn't care--he was beyond things like money or fame.... There's something in him--something that makes him the sort of man he is--something that draws me to him more than love. It _is_ more than love.... I could have gone without him easily but for seeing that in him.... Hilton, can't you realize? He's _straight_ and he's _true_, and I've been living my life up to now with a man who laughs at straightness and truth. Can't you imagine how it is--can't you _see_?"

I remember how I was silent, and how, touching my arm eagerly, she went on: "I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I haven't been very straight and true myself.... But I _have_. I've been true to one man, and that's all you can expect any woman to be. It isn't my fault that the man I've been true to doesn't happen to be my husband.... He might have been if _you_ hadn't interfered."

"If _I_ hadn't interfered?"

"Yes ... that's what I said."

"You mean, I suppose, that I'm to blame for persuading Terry to go to Vienna?"

"Everything would have been different if you hadn't done so."

"You would have gone away with him?"

"Yes."

"And married him--after the divorce formalities?"

"Yes."

"And you really think that you'd have been willing to give up your life of luxury to become the wife of a man whose yearly earnings would hardly pay for your hats?"

"He would have earned more if I'd been with him."

"Perhaps a very little more. But double or treble would still have seemed poverty to you."

"I wouldn't have cared.... You think I love money and luxury, but I don't--it all means nothing to me, really. As for Geoffrey's money, it gets on my nerves--I _hate_ it. Even now--in his chair all day long--he's making more of it--buying and selling shares and speculating and gambling and winning--yes, winning nine times out of ten. That's his way--he's always found winning the easiest job in the world.... Yet Terry can't even get the few paltry pounds he worked himself ill for! Oh, it's all sickening and damnable, and I wish we were all naked savages in a land where there wasn't such a thing as money.... I can't bear to think of it--it makes me want to go wild and fly at somebody's throat--anybody's--yours--Terry's--even Geoffrey's...."

I interrupted her then. I said quietly: "That's all very well, Helen, but you would have cared--years ago--even if money doesn't matter to you now. In fact, you _did_ care--and that was why, in my opinion, you didn't go away with him when you had the chance. He was willing, but you weren't.... I'm not blaming you, of course. But it's rather unfair of you to suggest that it was I who stood in your way, when all the time it was you yourself."

She stumbled forward a little, as if all her body had slackened. After a pause she said slowly and not very distinctly: "If it's true--_even_ if it's true--I couldn't help it...." It was as though she were pleading for some sort of mercy. She continued more sharply: "How do you know all this? Terry would never tell you anything, I know. Are you _really_ clever enough to see into me, or was it only a lucky guess? ... Oh, things--_things_--as Terry used to say--what a curse they are when we want to follow our heart's desire!" After another pause she recovered a kind of cynical equanimity. "You were quite right," she said, "to smash up my heroics. I'm rather worthless, I daresay.... I married Geoffrey because he was able to give me all that a part of me craved for--charming and cultured richness--you know the sort of thing. Geoffrey always _was_ rich--even before he made any money; he had rich ideas and loved rich things. Part of me married him for that, and I never knew there was any other part of me till I met Terry.... You do realize a little, don't you? I _know_ you do--I somehow _feel_ you do.... Not that I care very much whether you do or don't. I've made up my mind."

"For what?"

The abrupt question seemed to stir her. "I've made up my mind that--in certain circumstances--I'll take the short cut to happiness."

"Short cuts are apt to be dangerous."

"Danger? Who cares for that? There comes a time when nothing--nothing at all--counts but getting what you crave for."

"Well?"

"Would you condemn any woman to a whole life-time of wanting something that she could get any moment by having the courage?"

"I don't know. I don't know quite what it is you're proposing to do."

She said then: "Everything depends on next week--on Geoffrey's operation."

"How?"

She looked at me fearlessly. "I hope, for his sake and mine, that it's successful. For if it is--if he's going to get better--then I shall leave him."

"And if not?"

"Then--I suppose--I must just go on _wanting_...."

VIII

There wasn't in me then, and there isn't in me now when I think of it, any shred of anger with her. (That, of course is the danger, and, all the hard remorseless analysis in the world won't alter it.) I may as well confess the truth; her pleadings had stirred me to vivid sympathy with her. I felt, if it conveys anything to say so, that deep down behind all her treachery she was as true and straight as Terry himself.

And yet I wasn't on her side. I didn't agree with her. I hardly knew how much I disagreed until I began to talk about it. I remember how, as I talked, the blazing edge of the shadow crept towards us till we were in full sunlight--so hot that we had to move back. And over in another garden not far away there sounded the sharp plick-plock of crocquet-balls--delicious, enchanting accompaniment.

She might or might not leave Geoffrey, I began; that was, in a sense, her own affair. But the question of Terry was different--it was my affair, anybody's affair, as much as hers. Did she, I asked her plainly, think she was going to run straightway from Geoffrey to Terry?

She said: "Perhaps not straightway. But sooner or later--of course."

"It will just be a matter of guiding your relationship out of the Platonic paths into something more--intense?"

"Put it that way if you like."

"Of course you've been very clever. You've disguised your intentions very successfully--I'm sure he hasn't the slightest suspicion of them."

"I hope not."

I told her then the truth as I saw it. I was speaking, I urged her to believe, not as a moralist, but as a plain critic of circumstances.... She could leave Geoffrey, but--and I was quite ruthlessly frank about it--Terry would never have her. Terry, I went on, would never and _could_ never be happy with the wife of another man. There was something in his make-up--conscience (if she liked the word)--which would always intervene. And when that other man was his friend and benefactor the idea became absolutely impossible and unthinkable. Then, too, there was another point. If she left Geoffrey she would destroy the idea of her that was in Terry's mind--an idea that satisfied him more, perhaps, than any other idea of her that he had ever had. "You've been a hypocrite with him," I told her. "You've made him think that you and Geoffrey are perfectly happy, that all you care about is Geoffrey's happiness with you, and that the past is just a blank. Only the other day he told me how wonderful he thought it was that you and he could be such friends again--such _friends_, mind.... It's your only real chance--to go on acting the part you've made for yourself. If you don't--if you leave Geoffrey--I think I know what Terry will do. He'll just drop you--suddenly--without a word--as if you'd done something utterly and hopelessly caddish. It might cost him something to do it; it might shatter his faith in human nature; it might and probably would wipe out all the recovery in mind he's made so far; but he'd do it--I'm positive he'd do it. There's something in him, as you say, that makes him the sort of man he is--and that something, which you and I know but can't describe, would make him do it."

All she said was: "It wouldn't. I know him better than you. I have no fear of him."

"You think he loves you?"

"I don't know. Possibly. Probably.... But it would all come back so easily."

"And what then? Do you think he would be happy?"

"_We_ should be happy." She added, with a new note in her voice: "Think of it--in all my life the happiest moments have been with Terry, and in all his life the happiest moments have been with me.... And yet you ask me such questions!"

She laid her hand gently on my arm as she went on: "Don't be angry with me for what I'm going to do. If it's wrong, then I choose to do wrong--deliberately and with my eyes open. We all have that right, haven't we?"

"It's a terrible right."

"Yes, I know. But don't preach--I'm past all that."

"I'm not preaching. It's just that I think it's such a frightful mistake from your own point of view."

"No, no...."

"Helen--don't you see?--Don't you see how _impossible_ it is--how _utterly_ impossible ...?"

"I know that I _can_ do it ... and I _will_ do it...."

* * * * * * * *

The sunlit lawn, and the blue sky over it, and the End House there behind the foliage of the giant elms. Someone came out of the house through the conservatories, walked briskly under the trees, and then across the broad belt of sunlight. Small of stature, rather fat, and utterly unlike an explorer to the head waters of the Amazon, he blinked owlishly as he stepped into the shadow near us.... Mr. Hermann, of Chicago.

Helen introduced us, and the man touched my hand--just touched it--with those fat clammy fingers of his--maybe the most valuable fingers in the world, anyhow. He was vurry glad to make my acquaintance.... And then, to Helen: "Can I have a few words with you, Mrs. Severn?"

"_Now_?" She had obviously assumed that he had come merely to say good-bye.

"_If_ convenient."

She told him he might speak freely before me, and I wished she hadn't. Somehow I felt I wanted to get away, to walk by myself along the Spaniards Road and think over all that she and I had said; Mr. Hermann, of Chicago--(I will admit it)--jarred on me.

Then I heard him telling her that he was afraid what he had to say wasn't vurry good news.... No--she needn't alarm herself--he had just left her husband in the vurry best of health, having regard to the circumstances. It wasn't that....

"Please tell me," she said calmly.

He looked at her as if he approved and admired her directness. And he told her. I shall never forget the way her face turned ashen white as she listened; she seemed, too, in that short space of minutes, to grow years older.... He had made a careful examination of her husband, he began. It was a most complicated case, and he wouldn't use any technical language; but, to be perfectly candid, the matter was altogether different from what he had been led to expect. "You see, Mrs. Severn, how it is? Your husband's trouble is not what I thought--is not what he thought, either."

"It is more serious?" she said, still calmly.

"Oh, no. Not exactly _more_ serious. Just different."

"Well?"

He coughed and cleared his throat. "The operation--if there was to have been one at all--ought to have been performed immediately after the accident. That is my opinion."

She bore it well, though she didn't--for the moment--realize all that his words implied.

"But still," she whispered, "even now...."

"Now, I am vurry sorry to say, is too late."

"Too late! _Too late_?" She was realizing a little--just a little. "You mean that you're not even going to _try_?"

"To try, Mrs. Severn, when there is no chance at all, would be plain murder."

"_No chance at all_!"

"I'm afraid not."

We stood round her chair, and though she didn't faint or do anything like that, we could see that her mind and everything personal in her had flown far away from that sunlit garden. Hermann, in his odd jarring manner, was bubbling with sympathy; he doubtless considered her emotion perfectly natural in the circumstances. "A vurry sad case," he muttered to me. "Vurry sad indeed. She's a brave woman--she'll get over it.... But at first--after having hoped so much.... By the way, I didn't tell Severn. Thought it best not to.... _Her_ job, that is--or yours--do it better than an outsider...."

I nodded. "Will he always be the same?" I whispered.

"Always. Not the ghost of a chance of anything else. Never was.... Don't know how anybody calling himself a specialist could have made a mistake about it."

"He'll live, I suppose?"

"_Live_?" He put his soft flabby hand over my wrist in a way intended to be encouraging. "My dear sir, there's no need to be _too_ despondent. With luck he'll live as long as you or me--maybe longer."

IX

After Hermann had gone, we went in--Helen and I--to see Severn. To _tell_ him....

That which might have been the hardest thing in the world proved, after all, to be the easiest. He was reading when we entered, and as soon as he saw us he began: "I say, he's told you! I wondered if he would. I suppose he thought you'd break it gently to me...."

"You know!" I gasped.

"_Know_? I should know by your faces, anyhow. But as a matter of fact, I knew as soon as he'd finished prodding me in the back. Knew by the way he changed the subject when I questioned him. Knew by everything he said and looked.... Lawyers get used to reading faces."

He went on: "Don't look so terrible about it! ... After all, what the Law will lose, Literature will gain.... By the way, my book on Disraeli comes out next week. Give me a good review, won't you, Hilton? Something wistful and pathetic--in your own inimitable style. A sob in every line. Short paragraph about Disraeli. Column and a half about me. You know the sort of thing?"

I stammered something--Heaven knows what--and he asked me to reach a half-opened parcel that was on his table. "Advance copies," he said. "Give me one of them, will you? And my fountain-pen."

I obeyed, and he wrote my name with a great flourish on the fly-leaf. "There! My gift to you on this memorable occasion. Take it away and read it.... A gem of irony, sparkling with epigram and polished satire--that's what all the other critics will say. But you--you only--must see through it--must see the tragedy behind the mask.... Know what I mean?"

I didn't know. I don't know now. I don't know whether he was laughing at me, or whether, at this queer and desperate moment, emotion was seething in him. There were tears in his eyes, but they may have been tears of laughter.... I just don't know....

* * * * * * * *

Outside his room, with the sunlight streaming in upon us both, she took my hand in hers. All the time she hadn't spoken a word. She had sat beside him, pale and silent, gazing emptily at the shelves of books. When we left, he had smiled at her, and she had smiled back at him. That was all.

We walked into the quiet garden, where the shadows were conquering the last strip of sunlight on the lawn. The maid was clearing away the tea-cups. In that other garden not far off someone was still playing crocquet.... It was all, in a strange and curious way, reassuring.

"So now ..." I began, and stopped.

I think she knew what was in my mind, for she whispered: "I--shall keep--my word...."