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?"