Chapter SIX: I

I SAT by the window while she telephoned, and I smoked cigarette after cigarette, and I tried to think--tried to think--tried to think of Paris, and early morning, and what a train-accident would be like, and whether, if Severn.... It was all numbing and bewildering at first; but behind it, amazingly constant, was the thought of Terry.... How would it affect _him_? Somehow I had the feeling that even in a train-accident Severn could be relied on to look after himself.

I think I made some sort of stammering remark about the first reports being probably exaggerated; and Mizzi answered, turning her face momentarily away from the instrument: "It may be. We must wait till there is further news. There will be the newspaper soon."

We waited. I see now in my mind that crowded little box of a room with the sunlight streaming into it, and the map of Austria-Hungary on the wall, and Mizzi's pale-golden hair shimmering against its background of _Jahrbücher_ and _Wohnungsanzeiger_, and--most important of all--the telephone. The telephone dominated--was no sooner put down than taken up again; its shrill ringing pitched the highest and most excruciating keynote of tension. "Everybody is telephoning," said Mizzi, after she had rung up the _Stunde_ offices. "They do not know much, but it is believed that several Wien people have been killed. Now I will try the railway office."

And so on, telephoning here and there, and then here again, without definite result. And, in the midst of it all, through her little glass partition, she saw Terry coming down the stairs. "You had better go with him," she told me hastily. "He must not know of this. Afterwards there may be need to tell him, but not yet--not till we know ourselves...."

II

Breakfast in his room.... By the most terrible of ironies, he was almost cheerful; he told me he had thought out his letter to Helen and had practically decided every word that he would write. The change in him was extraordinary; the old despondency had given way to a feverish sort of optimism; he saw a future in which Severn and Helen, at his behest, lived happily ever after; he saw himself staying in Vienna to pursue research-work in Karelsky's laboratories; and he saw Mizzi--but how, exactly, _did_ he see Mizzi?

He said, anyhow: "Before I write my letter to Helen, I want to go down and have a chat with Mizzi." I suppose he wanted the answer to his proposal. Not that he looked as eager about it as a man ought to be about such a momentous affair. My own impressions of that meal are rather vague, anyhow; I was too agitated to notice anything very carefully. I remember the _Stunde_ being pushed under the door; it was my copy, and there was no fear that he would want to read it. I picked it up as casually as I could, and somehow expected to find headlines _in English_ about a railway accident.... Ah, a short, dimly printed paragraph in the stop-press column.... Something about "der Pariser Schnellzug" and "schreckliches Eisenbahnungluck".... I remember glancing through it as I had done years before at translation-pieces in examination-papers--with just that feeling of mingled eagerness and apprehension. I saw the words and knew most of them, yet somehow I missed the meaning of the whole.... What did "entgleisung" mean?....

We went downstairs after breakfast, and I was too dazed to have any plans. If he talked to Mizzi and there had by that time been bad news about Severn, perhaps she would tell him; if there had been no news, probably she wouldn't. The matter, anyhow, was in her hands, and so, of course, was the answer to his proposal.... The hall, when we reached it, was unexpectedly full of a chattering crowd, and in the midst of it a news-boy was selling copies of the _Stunde_--a later edition. Terry, who never took more than the very slightest interest in newspapers, asked me what all the commotion was about, and I tried to satisfy him with a vague answer while I led him across the hall towards Mizzi's office. I might have succeeded--I think I should have succeeded--had not a portly Viennese who was reading the paper muttered something as we passed by. What it was I don't know, but Terry heard it; and the news-boy, with the sure instinct of his tribe, at that moment thrust a paper towards him....

III

That altered everything. He staggered into Mizzi's office reading the headlines incredulously, and I left him there, believing that she would manage things better than I could.

He didn't write to Helen after all. He tried to, afterwards; but when, towards dusk, the news came through that Severn was among the seriously injured, he gave it up in despair. It was hopeless; there were no words in his vocabulary to cope with this new and more terrible situation--no words except the words he kept uttering to me in eager, half-frightened gasps. "She _must_ help him now, Hilton--she _must_ stay with him and help him now--oh, she _must_--she _must_--she couldn't do anything else.... She couldn't leave him now, could she?" He spoke almost as if he were pleading with himself to try to believe in the essential goodness of her. "He's never needed her before, but he'll need her now, and she'll realize it--she's bound to, isn't she? ..." And then, like the bursting of a dark cloud, came the inevitable--the feeling, deeper and blacker than ever, that _he_ was responsible for all that had happened, and especially for all that had happened to Severn. "_I_ made him go by that train--you remember? He wanted to go to Ronacher's and wait till the morning train--but I told him to keep to his promise--you remember that? _I_ made him go--all this would never have happened to him but for me.... You can see how it is, can't you?"

I was almost impressed myself by the horror of the coincidence, though I took care not to let Terry see it. I told him briskly that it was absurd for him to feel responsible, and that to anybody except himself the idea would appear ridiculous. Severn would be the first to say so.

He buried his head in his hands and was silent. My assurances hadn't helped him. It didn't matter to him what anybody else in the world said or thought. It didn't matter what Severn said or thought. It was he himself who held himself responsible. He was his own accuser. It really seemed to him, in that moment of obsessing guilt, that he had encompassed the ruin entirely by his own tragic efforts--that even, in some dreadfully obscure way, the whole accident, and all its results, lay to his charge. That, of course, was madness; and I think he saw it just in time. He went to his desk and tried again--pitiably, frenziedly--to write to Helen; but everything was wordless, voiceless; there was nothing--_nothing_ that he could put down. I said, with an attempt to comfort him, that Helen would almost certainly help Severn all she could; but he answered: "I don't want her just to _help_ him. I want her to _want_ to help him--I want her to"--he faced me with eyes like swords and added: "I can't tell you what I mean, but I _know_ I could tell her."

I asked no questions, for I knew he couldn't say more than he was saying. His nerves were in shreds, racked between that dreadful sense of personal responsibility and the still passionate ideal that made him hope that by some stupendous effort he could put everything right.... And then, quite suddenly, he threw down his pen and walked across the room. "I _will_ tell her," he said. "I _must_--there's no hope any other way.... I'll leave to-night--by the express--and be in London by Wednesday.... Oh, I _must_ go--can't you see that I _must_--_can't_ you?"

IV

I couldn't--I couldn't see anything for a while; it had all happened too suddenly.... And then, when I began to realize, it was too late; arguing was no use. Of the countless reasons why he shouldn't go, not one was apparent to him; he spoke of going as a sinner might speak of his conversion. "Somehow or other," he said, "I shall be able to help." He was certain of it. And with the certainty came, once again, optimism--a childish optimism that made him hope that Severn wasn't badly hurt (although the report most distinctly stated that he was), and that all would be well in some vague and shadowy future. Of course I raised objections; in fact, the more I thought of it, the more monstrous it seemed that he, of all people, and then, of all times, should meet Helen. What good, I asked him, did he think he could achieve by seeing her? He repeated that he could _help_. But how? Was it likely that she would fail her husband in such an emergency, and wasn't it far more likely that she would be insulted at the mere suggestion of such a thing?

He said that I hadn't understood him. He paused for a while, and I could almost see him struggling physically to put what he felt into words. Then victory came to him like a sharp explosion; he went on, with staccato excitement: "You see--I've made such a terrible hash of everything--right from the beginning. It's all led up to this--just one mistake after another.... I began it, and I've got to end it. I tell you, I've _got_ to end it. Nobody can end it but me.... We were all friends once, and we've all got to be friends again--whatever happens. It doesn't work--to put people outside your life. You can't do it, even when you try, and you daren't do it, even if you could...."

"So it all amounts to this--that you're going to put Helen back into your life?"

Helen _and_ Severn, he replied. And also even _I_ was involved, because of my quarrel with Helen. _That_ had to come to an end. We were all going to be friends again, and he would show Helen that true affection wasn't narrow and personal, but something that--that--something that.... In fact, to put the whole matter a good deal more plainly than he did, everything that was not perfect was to be summarily abolished, and the reign of universal love to begin forthwith. He was once more the eager missionary; the pendulum of his mood had swung again, and it was the future now that he saw, perfectly obliterating the imperfect past.

V

But everything that night that I shall never forget belongs to Mizzi more than to him. I went to see her in blank despondency and told her what had happened; I expected her to be at least as anxious as I was that Terry shouldn't meet Helen. But she wasn't; she merely nodded her head and remarked, at the end of it all: "So I had better reserve for you two berths in the _wagon-lit_ to-night, is it not?"

"Good heavens, no!" I cried, just in time to keep her away from the telephone. And then I asked her if she really supposed that we _could_ go.

She answered: "Well, he's going, isn't he?"

"He _says_ he is. But it seem to me we've got to persuade him out of it."

"Why?"

"_Why_? Well, can't you see all the hundreds of reasons why?"

"I can see this," she answered quietly, "that he _will_ go, whatever we do or say. Do you remember how--the night before last--I said I wished some fate would send him back to her? ... Well, this is fate."

Her supreme calmness astonished me. I said that whether it was fate or not, his going back could only have the result of turning bad into worse. "Think of it, Mizzi--think of him meeting her for the first time after those awful letters--and _preaching_ to her--that's what it'll amount to--about her duty to her husband! ... She'll feel like killing him."

"And if he stays here, he'll feel like killing himself."

"Not if you look after him."

"_I_ look after him? How can I?"

"There are ways."

She looked at me with tightened lips for a moment, and then said: "It is what you call an irony--is it not?--that I should have understanding of him but no power--while _she_--this woman in England--has power but no understanding."

"But you _have_ power, Mizzi."

She shook her head, smiling. "As much as you have--as much as anybody has, maybe, except _her_. You see, I understand him." She added, with no change in the level calmness of her tone: "You will be surprised, no doubt--when I tell you that last night he asked me to marry him."

I had to try to seem surprised, and I _was_ surprised, quite genuinely, at her manner of telling me. She went on, almost casually: "I know why he asked me to marry him. It was so that if I said 'yes,' he would feel bound to _me_--and therefore less bound to her. He _wants_ to love me, and he doesn't want to love her."

"I know he's very fond of you, Mizzi."

"Oh, yes, I daresay. But that is not quite good enough for me. I am a business woman, and I do not think the bargain is fair unless he loves me."

"You think he doesn't?"

"I am certain he doesn't."

"Why?"

"Firstly--because he tries so hard.... And then, also, there is another reason. This morning, when I told him that I would not marry him, he was glad."

"_Glad_? No--no----"

"He was. I could see the relief come into his eyes. His mind was full of thoughts about his friends in England, and about the railway accident--he really didn't want to bother about _me_. And when I refused him he looked so grateful. He was glad because it made it easier for him to go to England. He _does_ want to go to England. And I--all _I_ want is for the best to happen--the best for _him_."

I told her frankly that I was disappointed, and that I thought she was making a great mistake. She ought, I said, to have accepted him; he would soon have come to love her afterwards.

"Or else to hate me," she said quietly.

"Oh, that's absurd, Mizzi."

"No, no. He cannot help loving _her_--maybe, some day, if we were married, he could not help hating _me_. You see, I am cautious. I look to the future."

"And you really think that the best future for him is that he should see Helen?"

"I think the worst future is that he should stay here when all his body and soul are craving to be away."

"But I can't understand why you are so willing to let him go."

She said then, with a half-ironical shrug of the shoulders: "Ah, that is very hard to understand, I know. Maybe it is because I am selfish and care nothing for these two people whom I have never seen--nothing at all in comparison with _him_."

And that was as far as I could get with her. She had refused him, and all the arguing in the world wouldn't convince her that she oughtn't to have done, or me that she ought.

VI

I saw her again for a few moments while I paid my bill. I said that it was quite within the bounds of possibility that Terry would return to Vienna after a short interval, and that therefore it might be advisable to keep his room for him. Would she do this, and let me pay the charge without his knowing?

She told me that there would be no charge, and when I protested she said: "You can think of it, if you like, as my farewell gift to him, for I think I shall never see him again."

I demurred to that, but she only shrugged her shoulders and said: "It is a feeling I have." I asked her then if she would see Karelsky and give him some explanation of Terry's sudden departure; and she nodded all-comprehendingly. Never had she been more the calm, business woman; and it was _that_--the utter perfection of her pose--that I shall never forget.

She came with us to the station and saw us to our places on the train. The temperature had fallen slightly, and there was a cool breeze with the hint of rain in it. Terry, before the train started, thanked her for all the kindness she had shown him during those seven years, and said that he hoped he would meet her again before long. And she answered, in her coolest and most professional tones: "Oh, of course any time you are in Vienna you must be sure to come and see me. I am so pleased you have been satisfied here. Perhaps you will be good enough to recommend me to your English friends." (And yet how well she knew he hadn't any!) She was wonderful then, but the pose, because it was too perfect, gave itself away. The thought came to me at that moment overpoweringly--how extraordinary it was that Terry, with all his _penchant_ for self-accusation, hadn't long ago accused himself of making her love him! For she did love him, as much as any woman who ever lived, and the love was like a fire in her eyes as the train began to move. She shook hands with us and said, not "Good-bye," but "Wiedersehen." That, I think, was just the pose, guarding her faithfully till we were gone. And what then? There's no knowing, but I remember that when the train was almost out of the station I looked out of the window and saw her still standing on the platform where we had left her, and I think, though I can't be sure, that she saw me and waved a last farewell.

It was I, perhaps, who was the more depressed during that slow, rumbling night-journey towards the mountains. Terry had his alternate moods of optimism and despondency, but I was uniformly oppressed with a sort of _Wehmut_ or _Weltschmerz_ or whatever untranslatable thing the Germans call it. The cold dawn came as we ran into Salzburg, and by noon the sun was blazing on the red-roofed chalets above Innsbrück. All the time I was thinking far more of the past than of the future; the parting with Mizzi seemed to me far more pitiable than anything that had or could have happened to Severn. I didn't talk to Terry about it, for he, who never understood a woman at all, had certainly never understood Mizzi. Only once, indeed, was she even mentioned, and that was when he said, quite casually: "Odd, wasn't it, that Mizzi should ask me to recommend her hotel? She might have known I should do, if ever I got the chance. But I suppose the hotel's always in her mind--it seems to be what she lives for, anyhow."

"Do you think so?"

"She told me so herself, only yesterday. She said she didn't care for anything or anybody in the world except her hotel."

I didn't argue the point. But I guessed then (and I still think my guess was right) that that had been her way of refusing him. And perhaps, after all, it was the best way--the best because it could not but leave him with a tinge of disappointment in her. After such words, it would be hard for him to feel pity for her loneliness. Sometimes now I wonder what would have happened if I had said to him outright: "Mizzi loves you, despite her refusal, and her misery now that you've gone is more your fault than any of these other things, and also far easier to undo. Go back and love her and be happy...." He mightn't have believed me, and he certainly wouldn't have obeyed me; but perhaps, in his moments of deepest remorse, he would have tacked on Mizzi's unhappiness to the already heavy enough load of his own responsibilities. And that, of course, was the chief reason why I didn't tell him.

VII

The long journey passed, and by the time we reached the Swiss frontier, we knew all that the newspapers knew, at any rate, concerning the tragedy. It was an ordinary enough story of a driver trying to make up lost time and negotiating a curve ten miles an hour too fast. Result: derailment and a death-roll, so far, of twenty-four. The Basle newspapers, though they took great care to be incorrect about Severn's life and career (one of them even called him "l'avocat général de l'Angleterre"), gave no information as to the nature or extent of his injury. Somehow the absence of detail, and the fact that we were already nearer Paris than Vienna, overwhelmed me with a sense of this sharper and more instant tragedy; perhaps for the first time I ceased to think about Mizzi. I told Terry, as we stood at the buffet-counter at Troyes, that I was glad we had come, because if we could help Severn even a little, it would be worth while. He gripped my arm eagerly and replied: "I _knew_ you would think that--I knew you would."

Early in the morning we passed very slowly the scene of the accident (only a few miles from the Gare de l'Est), and saw the gigantic litter of wreckage, and the break-down cranes still working over the shattered and telescoped coaches. A dull drizzling rain was falling, and a grinning baby advertising a famous soap looked down on the scene from the wall of a near-by factory. Ten minutes later we were pacing the long platform of the terminus. The entire station and precincts were packed with English conducted tourists to the popular Swiss resorts; uniformed guides were shepherding them into groups, and I heard one of them promise his party that very soon they would be able to see "the place where the train ran off the lines." A gratuitous tit-bit added by Providence to their Ten Days in Lovely Lucerne.

We joined the crowd of anxious and grief-stricken inquirers in the information bureau. The small, ugly room seethed, as it were, with its burden of misery; and there was something hideously incongruous in the wall-posters of smiling red-cheeked holiday-makers perched on the summits of impossibly precipitous Alps. Women sobbed and chattered amidst their sobbing; men shouted and gesticulated; the whole _ensemble_, with the noises of trains and beating rain as an accompaniment, made me understand how men can sometimes lose control of themselves and run suddenly amok. The waiting lasted three-quarters of an hour, and then, when our turn came, the official would hardly listen when he found that we weren't _related_ to anyone concerned. We argued (so far as my limited French would allow), and all the while the official's nerves, as well as my own, were being strained nearer and nearer to breaking-point. Who were we? We gave our names. What was our connection with Severn? What were we--professionally? I took the liberty of labelling Terry "médecin," but when I went on to describe myself as "journaliste," everything everywhere seemed to snap suddenly. The official shouted and waved his arms about; he appealed to the crowd; the crowd shouted; I shouted; and Terry stood by me all the while, silent and very pale. He knew so little French that the row could only have puzzled him. It puzzled me, indeed, until I realized afterwards that I had been mistaken for some newspaper ghoul in search of copy.

At last, after explaining over and over again that we were both near friends of Severn and had travelled from Vienna especially to see him, I was reluctantly allowed to learn that he had been taken to a hospital in the Avenue Friedland. And five minutes after that, as we sat in the cab that was bearing us at breakneck speed along the boulevards, Terry collapsed.

That squabble in the station inquiry-office had been the last straw. Till then he had never wholly given way, but that--that almost trivial thing--shattered all the final strength he possessed. In the semi-darkness of the cab he made total surrender. It seemed a sort of fainting-fit; I wasn't skilled enough to diagnose exactly. But I realized immediately that it was no use going on with him to the hospital. He recovered when I opened both windows of the cab and let in the wind and rain; and then I shouted to the driver to take us to the nearest hotel. We pulled up almost straightway outside a large establishment in the Place du Hâvre, and for the next hour I worked like an automaton--getting Terry comfortable, calling in a doctor, and making all the necessary arrangements with the hotel people. The doctor reported a complete nervous collapse, and prescribed a long and absolute rest-cure; it was what I had expected. What I had _not_ expected was Terry's childlike acquiescence; all desire, it seemed, had gone out of him. He didn't even want to see Severn. "_You_ can go," he said, with a sort of tired sadness.

I said that I certainly would, and he smiled and closed his eyes. The doctor had given him a draught, and within a few minutes he was heavily asleep.

VIII

I went to the hospital that evening, and after prolonged difficulties and much tipping of porters, managed to reach Severn at last. He was in a small, comfortably-furnished separate room with a crucifix over the mantelpiece and a view of the brilliantly-lit Champs Elysées through the window. They had stretched him out on a sort of suspended platform, and the whole of his head and face, with the exception of apertures cut for his eyes, was a mass of bandages. Only his left hand was free to move, but as soon as I approached he held it out and pressed mine with the old sharp grip that he had always had. And then, while his eyes sparkled like black gems, he wrote in pencil on a writing-pad: "Delighted to see you. I can't talk, but I'm learning to write with my left hand. What's brought you here? Do you want a special interview with the man who had a carriage-door pushed into his spine?"

I stared at him and saw his eyes dancing (so it seemed to me) with merriment. _Could_ it have been that? I stammered: "My dear Severn, I came--_we_ came--Terry and I--to see how you were.... Are you--are you very badly hurt?"

He wrote: "There's a nasty kink in my spine, I'm afraid. Also a few face-scratches and a knock on the posterior third of the left parietal bone. Right arm sprained. Spirits excellent. Where's Terry?"

I told him the truth--that Terry was in bed at the hotel (which I named), and that he would have come with me if he had been at all well enough.

He wrote instantly: "So he's ill? I'm not surprised. What he needs is a long rest cure. Are you going to take him back to England?"

Was I? I had hardly thought what I was going to do, but I said: "Most likely, if I can manage to persuade him to come with me." Then Severn wrote: "That's right. We're both crocked up, Terry and I, and you've jolly well got to help us. You're the ministering angel. I'm the interesting mangle. The doctors think so, anyway."

I laughed hysterically. Then I made inquiries about Helen, and he wrote that she and June had been cabled for from New York, where they had been on holiday. They were already on their way. All this questioning and answering took time, for he insisted on writing down everything exactly as he would have spoken it. At the last moment, when the sister had entered to indicate that I must go, I asked him if there was anything I could do, and he wrote, in large block capitals: "Yes. Come and see me again before you go to England. But don't bring Terry--it would only upset him. And also, if you've time, you might run down into the basement of the Magasins du Louvre and buy me one of their BBB pencils with cork holders."

I wanted to laugh again--to burst into loud, unchecked laughter; but the sister was patiently waiting for me at the door. It was she who told me, as she led the way along the corridor to the head of the stairs, that most likely Severn would have to be wheeled about in a chair for the rest of his life. Somehow, even in my most despondent moments, I had never thought of anything so bad as that. I had pictured him dying of injuries; I had been prepared for even amputations and disfigurements; but this grim foreshadowing of death within life struck me with freezing bewilderment.

And so again into the heavy-scented night. The whole visit to Severn had lasted less than half an hour and I have set down everything I can remember of it. If the result seems rather slight and scrappy, make allowance for the fact that I had spent two successive nights in a train, and was fatigued to the point of faintness. I remember standing on the kerb facing the Arc de Triomphe and wondering if I too were going to crock up; I know that I walked the whole length of the Champs Elysées down to the Place de la Concorde before deciding finally that I wasn't. At a café in the Rue Royale I fortified myself with coffee and cognac and was glad of the few moments' rest; besides, I had to make up my mind what I should tell Terry.

He was still fast asleep when I reached the hotel, and I sat up reading and smoking in his room until very late. About two in the morning he awakened, but seemed too dazed to ask questions; I gave him a simple, straightforward account of my visit, stressing what was favourable and ignoring the worst. He thanked me when I had finished, but that was all. No questions; no comments even; it was as if he were too weary even to be interested. I told him that Helen and June were on their way back from America, but even then he only nodded his comprehension. And the next moment, with a whispered "Good-night," he closed his eyes and slept.

But there was no sleep for me. Despite an overwhelming tiredness I lay awake till the early morning traffic made sleep impossible. I smoked cigarette after cigarette in bed; and then, on sudden impulse, I got up and wrote a letter to Roebuck, telling him to prepare a second bed in my bedroom. "It is possible," I wrote, "that when I come back I shall bring with me a friend who will stay some time...." After all, that was the only thing to do. Terry had no English friends except me and Severn, and Severn had enough trouble of his own without being called upon to help Terry. There was really no alternative to his coming to stay with me, unless he went back to Vienna, which he probably wouldn't do in any case. Fortunately my rooms, though few, were fairly commodious, and Roebuck was the sort of man who would rise to an emergency. The only thing I feared was that Terry would find London, and especially the part I lived in, too bustling and noisy for him; apart from that, I was confident I could make him feel comfortable and at home.

The letter to Roebuck was never sent, for before the ink on the envelope was dry, the chambermaid brought me my morning pot of coffee, and with it the following letter from Severn, posted late the night before:

"MY DEAR HILTON,--I must write to thank you for your visit yesterday; it made me more cheerful than any hospital patient has a right to be; but the result, unfortunately, has been a strict order from the doctor that I'm to be kept perfectly quiet and to be allowed no more visitors till Helen and June arrive. He (the doctor) swore that you excited me, and so, by God, you did, and I wouldn't have missed a moment of it. Anyhow, I'm not in any severe pain, and I'm allowed to read and think, so I've nothing much to grumble about. Perhaps, if you remember, you could call at Brentano's in the Avenue de l'Opéra and have sent to me a copy of Brieux's play, _Les Hannetons_, which a friend advised me to read a few weeks ago.

"And now about Terry. I really think you had better get him to England as soon as you can, for breakdowns are serious things, and Paris at midsummer is the very last place to cure them. I happen to have a controlling interest in a small but decent hotel-pub near Hindhead, and if you will send (or, better still, take) the enclosed letter to the manager he will no doubt be pleased to accommodate Terry and yourself for as long as you like. I think it would be a good thing if you took Terry there the minute he is fit to travel.

"Just one thing more. I wonder if you could possibly arrange to meet Helen and June at Liverpool? They are due to arrive by the _Franconia_ next Monday, and it would be a kindly act to cheer them on the way here. Besides, you and Helen might make it an excuse for becoming good friends again. Please try to manage it, will you?

"Some of these requests are a sad trespass on your good nature, but, as I remarked before, you're already cast for the rôle of ministering angel! Ever yours,

"GEOFFREY SEVERN."

I have that letter still, and if I'm ever asked what sort of a man Severn is, I should like to show it and say: He's the sort of man who could write that sort of letter three days after being crippled for life....

I read it through to Terry, and when I had finished he looked almost as if he were going to cry. "It's awfully good of him," he said, and I took that to mean that he would accept the hotel offer. So that was one thing settled, anyhow. After a pause I said tentatively that I thought it mightn't be a bad idea if I _did_ meet Helen at Liverpool, and I suggested that he and I could travel together as far as Hindhead. He nodded tranquilly, and the whole thing seemed beautifully arranged until the doctor came and absolutely forbade him to travel so soon. In vain my protests about the comparative quietude of Paris and Hindhead; even Paris, he insisted, was better than crowding on trains and steamers. Perhaps by the middle of the following week the journey could be attempted, but certainly not before....

It was Terry, after that, who suggested that I should leave him in Paris while I went to meet Helen. He would be all right, he assured me; he would just potter about the hotel and do nothing at all. And when I looked doubtful he said, with the first sign of eagerness that I had seen in him since his collapse: "Oh, you _must_ go, Hilton. It's time somebody did the right thing...."

_It was time somebody did the right thing_. That, I think, was the saddest thing he ever said, for it showed his spirit at its pitiable lowest--without pride and without hope.