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....