What sort of a game was Helen playing? I thought it over, on those and other occasions, from every possible angle, and at the end of it all I had no convictions, only suspicions as before. If, at any rate, she were playing a game at all, it was a mighty clever as well as a mighty dastardly one--the cleverest and most dastardly by far that she had ever played.... But perhaps it wasn't a game. Perhaps they were both, with blindly honest footsteps, stumbling over the old ground into the trap that time had artfully concealed.... And perhaps there wasn't even a trap. Perhaps two people who had once been lovers really _could_ meet again after a space of years and be no more than friends.... Time, at any rate, would show. Time showed, in my opinion, when Severn obtained for Terry the offer of a job and Terry asked for a few weeks to think it over. It was a junior professorship of bacteriology in an Australian university, carrying with it a commencing salary of three hundred a year, and to me it seemed so good, in the circumstances, that Terry ought to have accepted it joyously and outright. I couldn't understand what there was to think over, and his vague replies when I talked to him about it only increased my astonishment. He admitted it was a good post. He assured me he hadn't the slightest objection to going abroad; on the contrary, he thought he would prefer it, and especially a country like Australia. Quite probably he would accept--oh, quite probably; it was just that he would prefer not to give an absolutely definite answer just then. The matter worried me, and I had the impression that it was worrying June also. Something was worrying her, anyhow; there was a quite perceptible cloud somewhere on her horizon. One afternoon I found her lying prone in a deck-chair in Taplow's garden, and sobbing--sobbing as only people can do who aren't good at putting their feelings into words. I didn't let her see me, and went back quietly into the bar-room. Terry was there, reading a letter that the postman had just brought. As soon as he saw he me gave a triumphant cry of delight. "It's from Helen," he said, smiling eagerly, "and she's coming down again on Thursday about the house...." VI That settled it. I went to Hampstead the next day. You can imagine the mood I was in, and you can imagine, perhaps, that I hadn't any very definite plans. The weather was burningly hot, and at the Tube station, to save myself the trouble of climbing the steep hill for nothing, I rang up the End House to enquire if Helen were at home. It was she herself who answered, and asked me quite politely what I wanted. The abrupt query nonplussed me for the moment, and by the time I was stammering something about a short talk, she was telling me that she was just going out, and would it do another time? "To-morrow?" I suggested. She was sorry, but she was afraid to-morrow was booked up. "The next day?"