The situation, however, was interesting, the more so as none of us knew what would happen. For quite ten minutes nothing happened at all, and we just sat round the table making remarks as conventional and featureless as if the occasion had been the state visit of a grand-duke. Terry sat at the table with us, and though he declined a glass of port, he pulled a pipe out of his pocket and asked if he might smoke. We chaffed him a little about letting go his good resolutions, and he answered, rather cryptically: "You have to choose what you'll let go and what you'll hold on to." For a time I allowed myself the faint hope that Helen, after all, mightn't carry out her threat, but her attitude soon dispelled it. "So you're working again?" she remarked, while he was filling his pipe. (And those were her first words to him.) He replied that he was. He also gave a perfectly natural explanation of everything that had happened to him. "I worked a bit too hard in Vienna," he said, "and the result was a sort of break-down. But I think I've got over it now--at the price of a year's slacking." And he smiled. She went on, with no more beating about the bush: "What do you think of Karelsky's latest discoveries?" He looked up sharply, but without perturbation. "They're interesting," he said, puffing contemplatively at his pipe. And we, as spectators, looked on. June and I lacked the power to intervene, and Severn, I think, was too fascinated by the spectacle to wish to do so. She continued her cross-examination. "Karelsky's been working rather on your lines, hasn't he?" "We've been investigating the same subject." "Do your conclusions tally with his?" "Some of them." Pause.... Then: "Karelsky seems to have got the most tremendous publicity out of it." "Yes. It's the sort of thing he likes." "And you don't, I'm sure." "I should hate it." "It's a good job, then, that he never mentioned you in any of his speeches.... I suppose you helped him?" "Oh, yes, I was paid to help him." She wasn't getting on as easily as she had expected; I could see that. I could see the calmness of her eyes turning gradually to exasperation, especially when June put in, rather coldly: "I'm sure Terry doesn't want to answer all these questions, mother." But it was his casual, "Oh, I don't mind in the least," that stung Helen to absolute desperation. "You don't mind, eh?" she cried fiercely. "You don't mind anything, do you? ... You're a fool, Terry--and I'm going to let the truth into you even if nobody else here has the courage to do it.... These discoveries Karelsky has made are yours, if you only had sense enough to realize it--they're _yours_, and he's stolen them off you, knowing what a little fool you are!"