And then he made a curious confession--perhaps the most curious he ever made. "When I thought I had failed altogether at the work I liked most, I had to try to think what I would do in the future.... And I had half made up my mind that--if they'd have me--I'd join some sort of mission affair and get sent abroad." "And how about the dogmas then?" I asked, and he answered puzzledly: "I don't know.... I _really_ don't know.... They'd have been a great nuisance, I admit--but still...." _Some sort of mission affair_! I think he had been engaged on that all his life. The next morning he left for Hindhead, full of eagerness for whatever the future might bring. And a few days later Helen visited him there. CHAPTER ELEVEN I WE found out, June and I, by the sheerest accident. At the end of that week she rang me up and asked if I would care to go with her to Hindhead. Some other engagement had fallen through at the last minute, and she had an afternoon and evening unexpectedly free. "We can take the two-seater car," she said, "and we'll just stop at the hotel for tea and then come back." We went. The sunny ride through Richmond and Guildford and over the Hog's Back (the high, windy way that June and I always preferred) was especially entrancing on that Saturday afternoon. I don't think either of us was very much surprised to find Terry out when we reached the hotel. On such a day of sunshine and cool wind there would have been something wrong with him if he'd been in. Taplow told us that he'd gone for a walk and hadn't left word when he'd return. And then, with the curious Taplow mixture of frankness and discretion, came the remark: "As a matter of fact, sir, Mrs. Severn called this morning, and they went out together." _As a matter of fact_! To him, perhaps, it was only that--a fact that might possibly interest us, or possibly might not. His casualness, anyhow, helped us to curb our own astonishment. I managed to order tea, and then June and I sat together in the little window alcove of the sitting-room, each waiting for the other to express the surprise we felt. But curiously, perhaps, neither of us did. We both pretended that Helen's visit was nothing out of the ordinary; Taplow had set us the example. When he brought our tea he said: "They'll have done quite a tidy bit of walking, I daresay, sir. Lovely weather for walking--not too hot, as you might say, sir, and not too cold either." All June said when he had gone was: "Mother hates walking." We had tea and tried to sustain a conversation. If this manuscript were an autobiography I should devote whole pages to the thoughts and fears that invaded my mind during that meal; and yet I believe I was quite eloquent about topics that now I can't even remember. There's a sort of talk that is especially copious when one is thinking all the time about something else.