Chapter NINE: I

MIDWAY through that April afternoon at the End House I thought: I shall feel like continuing the novel to-night.... I didn't do so, as a matter of fact, because I was too sleepy; but the desire was there, reawakened by the extraordinary way in which events were developing.

Helen was out when I called, but Severn himself, reading in his invalid-chair, was delighted to see me. I think he was still more delighted when I recounted to him the full details of my interview with June. His eyes quickened with excitement, and when I had finished he said: "Well, Hilton, it all sounds most decidedly queer, but let's join in thanking Heaven that _something_ has happened. If you only knew how bored I am in this chair all day, you'd understand my deep gratitude to Karelsky."

"To _him_?"

"Yes. For doing something interesting at last. When I read his stuff in the papers last night, I said to myself--'Ah, the usual thing--some discovery that will either be discredited within a fortnight or superseded within a year....' But it _isn't_ the usual thing, if he's stolen his ideas from Terry.... By Jove, it's going to be interesting--damned interesting." He asked me to get him a box of Havanas from a cabinet nearby, and when I brought it to him I saw that his eyes were filling with tears. "_Interesting_!" he repeated, offering me the box and lighting a cigar for himself. "D'you know--I've wondered some times if I should ever have to use that word again? But _this_ news--well, it deserves it. And it's jolly good of you to use up your valuable time in coming to tell me about it."

"It's more than interesting," I said. "It's serious. And it's going to be made serious, too--for Karelsky."

He laughed then. "What are you going to do--murder him?"

"It will probably be sufficient to bring an action against him."

"What for?"

I said that I wasn't a legal authority, but that it seemed to me that Terry would have a good case if he took the matter to court. "As a matter of fact," I added, "I rather wanted your advice about it."

"My advice is never to expect to win an action because you've got a good case."

"No?"

"The case doesn't matter. It's the lawyer that counts. That's my experience, as a man who's won hundreds of bad cases and made other people lose hundreds of good ones."

"It sounds rather terrible."

He laughed again; I think he would have purred if he had been able. "Shall I tell you," he said, "what I would say if I were defending Karelsky in an action brought against him by Terry?" He paused for a moment, and then, with gleaming eyes and the old professional note in his voice, continued: "Gentlemen of the Jury,--my client is a scientist of world-wide reputation. His honour is assailed by a man of whom none of you, I am sure, have ever heard before. Let me tell you something about him. He was formerly in the employ of my client. After being granted full access to all the privacies of the Professor's laboratories, he left suddenly, breaking his signed contract and leaving behind him not even a word of explanation. Since then he has done no work of any kind, but has been content to live mainly on the charity of friends.... And this is the man who, according to the prosecution, has made a discovery to rank with those of Kelvin and Lister!"

"There are the note-books and papers to prove it," I interjected sharply.

"Ah yes--the so-called evidence of the prosecution. Gentlemen of the Jury--what is it you are asked to believe from this _evidence_? I will tell you. That this man--a failure--penniless--unemployed--an unsuccessful applicant for dozens of jobs in all parts of the world--that this man kept in his possession a secret which any day, if he had disclosed it, would have made his pocket full and his name world-famous! ... No, gentlemen, the idea is _too_ absurd. I suggest that this action is entirely malicious. I suggest that it is the plaintiff, and not his illustrious employer, who did the thieving. I suggest that while the plaintiff was in Karelsky's employ in Vienna he made copies of his employer's private records, and then, nearly a year later, when he read Karelsky's speech, realized the significance and the possible value of them.... It was a silly, futile scheme, my friends, but was it not the sort of one that a man of good education, crazed by failure and disappointment, might devise?"

"This is absolutely monstrous!" I protested. "Do you really mean that the truth could be so diabolically twisted round----"

"The truth," he interrupted cheerfully, "can always be diabolically twisted round, or how else would lawyers get their living? ... Mind you, I'm only telling you the particular twist that _I_ should give it if _I_ were handling the case.... As a matter of fact, there are one or two points in Terry's favour."

"You do think that?"

"Oh, yes. There's his breakdown in health, and the rather shabby way Karelsky treated him about his money--we should require evidence from your friend Mizzi about that.... And then there's Karelsky's general reputation, which isn't too high amongst the sort of people who don't believe all they read in the newspapers. And of course he's a Russian-born Jew naturalized an Austrian--that can always be made to sound rather terrible to a jury...."

"And the note-books and papers--wouldn't they count?"

"Undoubtedly, though we should have to be damned certain of every detail beforehand. For instance, how did Karelsky make the theft? Did he get hold of Terry's books and make copies? Or were there duplicates left behind in the Vienna laboratories? ... And also--a rather important matter--what exactly were the relations of Karelsky and Terry in Vienna? Supposing that Karelsky, when the action is tried, should say blandly: 'Oh, yes, it was this man who kept my records and looked after my mice and generally made himself useful. But he was under my supervision, and it is outrageous that he should claim credit for doing things that I expressly told him to do... What should we say to that, eh?"

"Surely we could bring witnesses to prove that Terry was an independent research-worker?"

"Could we? I doubt it. And, in any case, Karelsky could bring other witnesses to say he wasn't."

"The disgracefully low wages that Karelsky paid would show the jury what sort of a man he was."

"Not at all. They would show what kind of a man Terry was. Karelsky would say--'These are good wages for a mere laboratory assistant--a man who takes temperatures and cleans test-tubes.'"

I said (and regretted it immediately afterwards); "It seems a pity Terry ever had anything to do with Karelsky."

He replied instantly: "It is. And, of course, it's my fault in the first place. Fortunately I've no conscience. If I troubled about all the thousands of things in the world that are my fault, I should never have a minute's peace."

We talked on until after tea, and he was (or seemed to me) most irritatingly cheerful about it all. There was even a faint undertone of admiration in his voice when he spoke of Karelsky; and my own indignation grew with his calmness. Couldn't something be done, I implored him. Was Terry to stand by helplessly and do nothing at all?

He remarked that Karelsky was clever--_damned_ clever.

"I daresay he is," I retorted, "and I believe you admire him for that, whether he's a rogue or not!" He laughed then. "I'm afraid it's a shade more subtle than that, Hilton. You see--I like things that make me happy. Being interested makes me happier than anything. And Karelsky interests me.... Therefore--you follow? ... I'm sorry if it seems to you rather callous."

"It's Terry I'm thinking about," I replied. "It's terrible to think that there's nothing really that can be done. Surely there's _something_--some law or other----"

"Oh, there may be--I certainly don't say there isn't. All I want to make clear is that if he goes into battle against a man like Karelsky he'll have to fortify himself with something more than a few note-books and an immense quantity of moral virtue. Do you think you understand?"

I thought I did. I thought that Severn had made up his mind to stand aside, an amused and cynical spectator of a drama so rare as to be especially worth the seeing. Severn, I decided, was going to be neutral, being bound to Karelsky no less than to Terry by ties of 'interest'. It was a disappointment, but, in any case, what _could_ he have done? Beyond advice (which he had already given freely enough) there was little that could reasonably be expected from a man unable to move out of his chair without skilled assistance. He had done and was doing his best, and it was perhaps too much to wish that he had shown my own particular brand of indignation.

And yet in most of those thoughts I was entirely wrong. That night, as I was working late in my room, one of the End House servants brought me a note that showed me how wrong I was. Written less than an hour before I broke open the envelope, it was as follows:

"MY DEAR HILTON,--June arrived about half-an-hour ago, and told me over again most of what I already knew from you. She happened to have some of Terry's papers locked up in her room (she had been copying them out at home), and a glance at them convinced me far more (if you will forgive me for saying so) than the combined oratorical efforts of you and June from now until Domesday. I am sorry to appear so distrustful, but the fact is that temperamentally and from experience, I never _really_ believe extraordinary yarns until I get proof.

"Not that anything I've seen so far is _legal_ proof; it isn't that at all, but it shows me pretty clearly that K. has been up to his tricks. I doubt if we shall be able to trap him; indeed, I reckon that he wouldn't do a thing like this unless he had a good many safe cards up his sleeve. But even if we don't _win_ the action, there's no reason why we shouldn't _have_ it, provided we go about it in the right way.

"See what I mean? First of all, we'll work up a damned great newspaper campaign; I'll have the _Messenger_ editor to dinner next week and see what I can do with him. It's my belief that an anti-Karelsky campaign is just what the country is _subconsciously_ ready for; the 'great man' stunt has been overdone lately. Then, too, there's the psychological value of Terry himself--he's young, handsome, and English. All that will count.

"Eventually, of course, we shall begin the action (unless K. frustrates us by a libel charge, which is what I would do in his place). I don't think we shall win, but we'll fight like hell. Besides, if once the dear old British public takes Terry to its ample bosom, it doesn't matter whether we win in the courts or not. Anyhow, I shall take up the case for Terry; and it'll be fearfully impressive when they wheel me into court. By God, it gives me a thrill to think of it! William Pitt the Elder did something rather similar, I believe, in 1778, but that was in the House of Commons. Won't it make a grand subject for next year's Academy--'The Last Speech of Geoffrey Severn'--purchased for the nation by the trustees of the Chantrey Bequest! The really perfect thing, if only Providence could be prevailed upon to oblige, would be to die just after the last word of my final speech. I'd give at least ten years of my life to die at that particular moment.

"June goes to Hindhead to-morrow to talk over the whole matter with Terry. After that, things ought to move quickly. Can't you imagine how I feel, with the prospect of being drawn so soon out of the Lake of Existence into the Whirlpool of Life? In great haste, yours,

"G.S."

II

I have that letter by the side of my typewriter now, and I have copied it word for word. It takes up three sheets of Severn's best parchment notepaper, and each sheet has been torn across into four pieces. And that, even if there were nothing else, would bring back to my mind the Sunday of 'the Karelsky week-end.'

So Fleet Street called it, and with good reason. Never in all my experience have I known such a frenzied chorus as went up from the newspapers on that first Sunday after Easter. From the rolling periods of Mr. Garvin down to the silliest paragraph of the silliest columnist, the theme was just Karelsky--Karelsky--Karelsky.... It was more than infuriating; it was sickening. I remember strolling across Lincoln's Inn Fields in the morning sunlight and asking myself the question: What would you think of all this if you had never met Karelsky and if you didn't know that he was a rogue? I decided that, even so, I should have reacted against the stupendous publicity that the fellow was getting. Severn was right; the 'great man' stunt _had_ been overdone.

Something lured me to mention Karelsky's name to people I met. The match-seller in Holborn told me that he hadn't read the papers and had never heard of Karelsky. The policeman at the corner of Kingsway said: "Seems a lot o' fuss about one man, don't it? Time enough to shout when 'e's really done something, _I_ should think." Both answers gave me such keen pleasure that I warned myself against letting my feelings develop into an obsession.

In the afternoon I read over all that I had written of the novel, and then tried to resume where I had left off. But I kept thinking: June is at Hindhead now, talking to him, telling him what has happened.... The thought was a disturbing one. At tea-time I gave up the idea of writing any more until I heard from her. And then, in the evening, Helen came.

We hadn't met for weeks, and the sight of her, so sudden and unexpected, made me think, for the first time without an effort, of her age. It wasn't that she looked old; it wasn't that she looked even her age; it was rather that there was some curious expression in her eyes that could never have belonged to a younger woman. She looked--it is the only word--tragic. And she began, without preamble of any kind: "I've just been told about Terry. Is it true?"

"About Terry and Karelsky?"

"Yes."

"It is true, I'm sorry to say." I offered her a chair, and she sat down with a sort of sweeping dignity I have often seen on the stage, and which, until I saw _her_ with it, always struck me as overdone.

"Geoffrey told me," she went on. "He's wild with delight. It will give him _such_ a chance of making a show of himself."

I said nothing.

"It's what _he's_ going to do--his own future success that he's been talking to me about. Never a word about Terry's tragedy."

"And never a word about his own tragedy, either," I put in. "You may as well be fair."

"_Fair_?" The word stung her, I could see. "_Fair_? It doesn't matter about being fair to _him_. _He_ can defend himself. None better. Even stricken as he is, and with the whole world against him, I believe he'd be more than a match for it."

"You ought to admire him for that."

"Ought I? One gets tired of admiring a man for the same thing. I've admired him for his brains and his power so long that I'd like a change."

"And you don't feel sorry for him, lying in that chair all day and positively aching for something to happen?"

"I feel sorrier for Terry--giving the best years of his life to a thief and a fraud."

"I don't see why you shouldn't feel sorry for both of them."

"_You_ do, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"Equally?"

"Roughly so, I daresay." I went on, taking advantage of her silence: "Look here, I'll tell you frankly what I think about Geoffrey. He irritates me by his calmness just as much as he irritates you, but I try to look behind it all, and there I see a stoicism that bears his own misfortune just as bravely as he expects other people to bear theirs."

"That's very nicely put."

"It's _true_. Do you suppose the man's happy, chained to a chair for the rest of his life? Can't you forgive him his delight at the prospect of once again playing his little piece under the limelight? Maybe it isn't what you or I would crave for, but still, _he_ wants it badly enough, and what right have we to be so confoundedly superior about it? _He's_ a pagan, frank and unashamed, and we're pagans, maybe, with the cloak of hypocrisy thrown over us."

"You're getting quite eloquent."

"If I am, it's because I feel what I say. I _like_ Geoffrey, and I'm damned sorry for him. I don't know which of the two I'm sorrier for--him or Terry. And especially after the letter I had from him last night.... He's going to put up the biggest fight he can on Terry's behalf, and if he can manage to enjoy himself at the same time, I for one am very glad.... Anyhow, here's the letter--you can read it if you'd care to. It may, of course, strike you as something absolutely diabolical and callous, but _I_ think it's rather pathetic."

She read it slowly, and then deliberately tore it twice across and dropped the pieces on to the floor. "_That_," she said, with deadly quietness, "is what I think of it.... And now, if you've quite finished defending a man who's well able to defend himself, perhaps you'll tell me what's going to happen to Terry?"

III

When I look at those torn fragments now, I think how excruciating must have been the tension that made her do a thing so pointless and silly. I oughtn't of course to have shown her the letter at all. It merely infuriated her; she didn't and couldn't see in it what I have seen.

I think I never realized fully before then what a difference the years had made in her, and how changed she was from those early days when she had been the charming and immensely popular girl-wife of the successful careerist. She was still good-looking, but there was a growing bitterness in her that was killing the charm, as her altered habits had already killed the popularity. People had admired her in a vague sort of way for sticking to her husband, and then after a time they had forgotten her. She never troubled about her old friends, and when she met them she gave (as she gave me) an impression of grim implacability.

Implacable she was that night when she asked me what was going to happen to Terry. "When he learns how he's been duped and defrauded, how will he stand it? And what can he do? He won't win the action against Karelsky (Geoffrey's been frank enough to tell me that)--the action's merely to give Geoffrey a chance of amusing himself. After Terry's served his purpose in contributing to that noble end, what on earth is to happen to him?"

Implacable....

I said quietly: "One thing at a time. It's no use looking so far ahead.... June's telling him to-day."

"So I gathered."

"She's discussed it with you, no doubt?"

"She discusses nothing with me. She prefers her father as a confidant."

Implacable again....

"Well, anyhow, we can only wait."

"_Wait_? We've waited long enough.... Seven years--for the inevitable to happen.... I'm tired."

"Of waiting?"

"Of everything."

And that, I saw at once, was the look in her face that no younger woman could easily have had--that look of being tired of everything.

The anger that had made her tear up Severn's letter had spent itself, and for over an hour we talked together very quietly about Terry and what might happen. She, like June, was fearful that the blow would be too much for him. I tried to reassure her by saying that lately there had been distinct signs of the beginnings of recovery, but that seemed to make her more apprehensive than ever. "To hit a man when he's down isn't as bad as to hit him when he's just coming up," she said. And then there was the strain of the fighting campaign that Geoffrey was planning for him--how would he stand that?

How _would_ he? I wondered myself. I wondered how soon I should hear the result of June's momentous interview, and what degree of catastrophe there would be to learn.... And then, at the moment of deepest gloom, there came a sharp knock on my outer door. I went, and found one of the End House chauffeurs with a letter in his hand. I thought immediately of Severn--that the letter was some urgent summons from him, either to me or to Helen. Yet he would have telephoned if anything had gone seriously amiss. A dozen vague alternative conjectures suggested themselves; and all before the man said: "From Miss June, sir. She told me to bring it to you."

"Miss June? I thought she was at Hindhead?"

"So she is, sir. I drove her down this morning, and she sent me back this evening with the car and this letter."

"She's not coming back herself, then?"

"Not to-night, at any rate, sir. She's staying at the hotel."

"I see...."

But I didn't see. I stood under the light in my small lobby and tore open the envelope. The letter was pencilled and very short. Just this:

"DEAR HILTON,--The most extraordinary thing has happened, and I want you to get down here to-morrow morning if you possibly can. I'll meet the 10.15 at Haslemere. I don't think it's any use my trying to write any details, but I'll tell you this much to reassure you--it's good news. At least _I_ think it is. Do come to-morrow.

"JUNE."

Helen entered from my sitting-room, and before I had time to think, I said: "It's from June."

"June?" she echoed; and then, with what may or may not have been sarcasm, added: "If it isn't _too_ private, may I see it?"

I gave it to her, and just for a moment while she was reading I wondered if she were going to treat it as she had done Severn's. But at last she handed it back to me, saying sharply: "It tells us nothing."

"Most likely whatever has happened is too complicated to write down," I answered. "Anyhow, June says it's _good_ news."

"She says _she_ thinks it's good news."

"Which you fear may not be quite the same thing?"

"_Fear_?" There was fear in her voice. "I think I fear everything."

"Even after June's reassurance?"

"June? June doesn't understand--doesn't understand _anything_ in this business. She _couldn't_."

"Why not?"

"Because, for one thing, she's only a child, despite her adult ways of managing things. She hasn't the faintest idea of what sort of a man Terry is--oh, it's absurd--_too_ absurd...." She broke off suddenly and added, after a pause: "You'll go to-morrow, of course?"

"Most likely."

She shrugged her shoulders almost contemptuously, and then decided to return to the End House in the car that the chauffeur had driven up. I wasn't altogether sorry; somehow she was just beginning to get on my nerves.... On the pavement, as I saw her into the car, she said, finally: "I'm glad you'll go to-morrow. Then you'll find things out for yourself. June's too young--too unsophisticated. She means well, but she _can't_ know--she _can't_ understand--she must be making terrible blunders about him all the time. It was all right her teaching him tennis--she can do that well enough ... but now...."

The chauffeur had not heard us talking, and drove away in the middle of that sentence. I have often wondered how, if at all, she had been going to finish it.

IV

And the next morning....

It was one of those cool, sunlit days when to leave London for the country is more than a pleasure--it is an intoxication, an orgy. During the journey from Waterloo there seemed but one rift in the whole sky of optimism--and that one rift was Helen. She _had_ been getting on my nerves. I had already learned to dislike her attitude towards Terry and her husband, and now, it seemed, I was beginning to dislike her attitude towards her daughter also.

Her daughter met me at Haslemere, cool and pink and smiling in the sunshine. It is the loveliest picture in my mind (no, _nearly_ the loveliest) that quiet country railway station with June and the sunshine mingling together into a blaze of welcome. We conversed for a few moments in that eager unimportant way that always heralds the important. Had I minded coming? Should we hire a car to take us over the ridge to the Valley? _She_ preferred walking--it was only three miles or so.... Very well, we would walk.

And we walked. Everything she said and everything I said has that winsome background of sunlight and red roofs and green lanes. We were in shadow when I said: "It's good news that I'm to hear, anyway. That relieves my anxiety, but not my curiosity."

Then we came out of the shadow into a yellow blaze of roadway, and she answered: "Yes, it's _good_ news. It's more than good--it's marvellous."

"He took it well, then, when you told him?"

"Oh." And we passed into the shadow again. "I didn't need to tell him. He knew already."

"Really?"

"He'd seen one of the newspapers.... Odd, wasn't it?" She glanced at me quizzically. "_You_ said he never read them."

"We both said so. The headlines must have caught his eye.... But tell me what happened."

"I will, if you'll give me the chance." She paused, and for a moment we walked on in a rather queer silence. Then suddenly the trees by the roadside gave way, and a blaze of sunshine enfiladed us. That seemed to give her impulse to continue. She said abruptly: "The fact is, Hilton, he hasn't the remotest idea that Karelsky's been thieving from him at all."

"But----"

"It's no good protesting. I know it all sounds incredible. But it's true enough.... When I got here yesterday he was different--utterly different; I knew something had happened the moment I saw him. I thought he was hysterical at first.... Then I found he was absolutely wild with delight."

"_Delight_?"

"Yes; and I mean it. He thinks--oh, it's so difficult to tell you _what_ he thinks. But--somehow or other--he regards Karelsky's speech as a sort of justification of all the work he's done. He says it shows he's been working on the right lines."

"He recognizes his own work in Karelsky's announcements, then?"

"Oh, yes.... That's the queer part of it. Maybe he thinks Karelsky was entitled to do what he did.... I don't know. He doesn't talk about that. He's just pleased (he says) because his work's been worth doing."

"Worth stealing, anyhow."

"Yes, I know.... It's easy to be sarcastic. I tell you--it hasn't occurred to him that he's been let down at all. On the contrary, he thinks it's great that his seven years of hard labour should have led to such a magnificent result."

"Now _you're_ being sarcastic."

She shrugged her shoulder. "I'm trying not to be. I'm trying to look at it from _his_ point of view. He really is sincere. I'm certain of that, because of the difference in him. _You'll_ notice that. And he's working again like mad--trying, he says, to make up for a wasted year."

"But surely, when you put it to him, he could see what had happened?"

She said quietly: "I didn't put it to him. I didn't put anything to him.... And that's just what I want to talk to you about...."

We talked. That quiet country lane, dappled in sunshine, wound upwards to the windy cross-roads, and all the way we argued whether a man who had been the unknowing victim of robbery should be told about it by his friends. Perhaps it isn't fair to put it like that. She wasn't arguing the general case; it was only of Terry that she was thinking. Briefly, her idea was that we should leave things where they were. Since the truth hadn't occurred to him, what was the use of trying to prove it to him?

I answered her as well as I could. I told her that my whole mind and soul revolted against letting Karelsky go scot-free. We ought to fight, and Terry ought to fight--even if we didn't win. Severn thought so, anyway, for he intended to back Terry in a law-suit....

Then she said: "Damn the law-suit. If father wants one to amuse him, he can denounce Karelsky publicly and get himself sued for libel. There's no need to bring Terry into it at all. He's happy--because he thinks he's succeeded in something at last. What's the good of convincing him that what _he_ thinks is a success is only another failure?"

Put like that, it sounded fairly unanswerable; nevertheless, I wasn't by any means convinced. All I promised was that I wouldn't attempt the process of disillusionment till I had discussed the matter with her at least once again. She smiled and answered: "I'm satisfied with that. I'm so certain you'll agree with me when once you've seen him."

And just then I did see him. He was coming up the lane to meet us.

V

He was different. It isn't easy at first to say anything but just that. He came to me with outstretched hand and gave me a quick smile and a grip of iron; with his superb physical fitness there seemed now another and more potent sort of fitness. By God--June was right about him!.... All the way down the lane she and he were talking, but I didn't hear a word: I was desperately trying to size things up for myself. He _was_ different; the cloud had passed from him; he looked as he had looked in those old days when we had tramped for miles on those Sunday afternoons.

And at the Valley Hotel we went into the small ground-floor room where June's tidy hand had exercised careful restraint over the litter of his books and papers. But there were signs visible enough of what had been happening--a typewriter, a paper-perforator, and stacks of typed manuscript. I said, cheerfully: "Well, I see you've begun work in real earnest."

And he looked almost embarrassed, as if he had been found out in a guilty act. "I'm just gathering up the loose threads," he replied, and changed the subject.

It was all wonderfully, _miraculously_ different. Under that clear brightening sun we strolled over to the tennis-court, and there June and he played a few games together with me as spectator. He wasn't dressed for it; that, apparently, didn't matter.... I suppose the play was rather good; but I am no judge of tennis, and the game, like most games, bores me to desperation. All that interested me that morning was Terry's extraordinary physical agility--yes, and June's too. It was hard to realize that he was a decade older than she; and yet, when you did realize it, there seemed something curiously right about the gap. A girl of twenty _can_ be a woman, and very often is; but a man of twenty is never very much of a man....

Then came lunch, and the sort of lunch that Taplow, alone of all the hotel-keepers I know, can serve at short notice. During the meal the talk was all of tennis and walking and the beauties of the locality and nothing in particular--not a word about anything more important. But afterwards June made an obvious excuse to leave me alone with him, and then, at my suggestion, we went out into the sunlit lane. "Let's climb to the Punch-Bowl," Terry said, and I agreed, as I would have agreed to anything.

That afternoon! It was a time of almost sheer happiness, for I took thought of nothing but the clear truth that somehow or other the miracle had been accomplished. He was _keen_ again, filled with the old zest for life and work; and he told me, embarrassedly at first, but with eagerness after a while, the things that were in his mind.

First of all he thanked me for the way I had managed to put up with him. That was rather an unnerving experience. Then he expressed his gratitude to Severn, and said that he would visit him soon and thank him personally. "To think," he exclaimed, "that all these months he's been ill, and I haven't even visited him!"

"He'll certainly be glad to see you," I said, and rather oddly, perhaps, I didn't think of Helen.

"I want to repay him," he went on. "And also--I must have a job. Do you think he could help me again?"

"What sort of a job?" I asked, and he replied confidently: "There's only one sort of a job I'll ever have, whether I starve or not. And that's the job I've been successful in already."

It was fine to hear him talk like that; and yet, when I thought of Karelsky, it was infuriating. _Successful_? He really thought he _had_ been. He said: "I _must_ work. I feel there's work that only I can do. That's conceit, I daresay, but I can't help it. I feel I must get on with the job. I'd go back to Vienna if there were nowhere else."

Before I could check myself I had exclaimed: "Indeed you won't do _that_!" and he looked up with such sharp surprise that I knew then, as June had known earlier, the utter impossibility of telling him the truth. She had said that I should agree with her, but it wasn't exactly that. I knew he must find out the truth in time; but I felt that _I_ couldn't tell him--not just then, at any rate. I even, in a sort of way, joined in the deception; I felt that for the present he must be helped and not hindered in his dream. I told him I was sure that Severn would manage to find him the sort of post he wanted, and that probably it would be a good deal nearer home than Vienna.

"I don't care where it is," he answered. "Anywhere will suit me--provided the work's there." And he added, with particular intensity: "Thank God I'm not married, or anything like that.... As it is, I'm free--absolutely--to give my whole life to the sort of things I want...."

VI

In the cool twilight of that evening June and I began our journey back to town. Taplow drove us to Haslemere station in his dilapidated Ford car, and Terry sat with June in the rear seat. All the way she was talking and laughing, and he was evidently saying things that made her laugh. It was an aspect of him that I had never seen before, but when June and I were alone in our compartment she made me realize that I had. "Do you remember years ago," she said, "when he used to come round to the End House and bend glass tubing and mix sulphuric acid with ammonium carbonate and things like that? I was a child then, and he always tried to amuse me.... I'm afraid he still thinks I'm a child."

She was pensive for a while, and then went on quietly: "Of course you've kept your word about not telling him. I knew you would. But I've an idea you haven't even _wanted_ to tell him. You agree with me, don't you, that it's better to let him keep his illusion?"

"I quite see that it would be very difficult and unpleasant to tell him," I answered. "But, on the other hand, I don't see how he can live very long without finding out."

"Why?"

"Because, for one thing, your father intends to push on with this legal action against Karelsky."

"Then we must persuade him to drop it."

"Do you think _you_ can persuade him?"

And she answered: "Yes, I think I can." So quietly, so serenely; there were no limits, apparently, to the things she felt she could do.

"Very well, then," I said, and we left the matter at that. It was dark when we reached Waterloo. She took the tube, and as we shook hands gave me her final message.

"You're on my side," she said. "Somehow I _know_ you are. My idea, _our_ idea, in fact--is that Terry mustn't be told. It might just smash him if he realized.... He mustn't know, and we mustn't let anybody tell him. Just let things go on quietly for a while, and the danger will be over."

"Masterly inactivity?" I suggested, and she answered with a smile:

"Yes, if you like. And _I'll_ persuade father."