"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...."