"Oh, no," I answered. "A trifle morbid, perhaps, but no more than that." He said slowly, as if talking to himself: "_Morbid_? That's the word _she_ used." "Who?" "Helen." I think we both of us then stood suddenly still. We had entered a bright space of moonlight, and we both looked at each other, knowing exactly what we were thinking. I could see from his eyes that he hadn't meant to let me know that he called her Helen. We took the train at Waltham, and nothing else that he said was of the least importance. II I suppose henceforward _I_ had better call her Helen. And, as a matter of fact, the first time I saw her after my return she asked me to do so. "Mrs. Severn," she said, sounded dreadfully stiff between friends. Perhaps it did, but I found it hard to break the habit. I had met her one afternoon on the pavement outside University College. She asked me if I were just going up to see Terry, and I replied, with perhaps an implied rebuke: "Certainly not. Have you just been to see him?" "Why 'certainly not'?" "Because he hates to be interrupted in his working hours. But I suppose you _have_ been to see him?" "Yes," she answered, smiling. "But not in the way you think I have. I've been to one of his lectures, that's all." And then she told me details. She laughed over it in a way that seemed to betray an inward nervousness. She had begun a course in bacteriology. It was interesting. One ought to have _something_ serious in one's life, oughtn't one? "Terry says so, I daresay," I replied. "_You_ call him Terry?" "I do. Have you any objection?" She laughed again. "Of course not. I think the less formal we all are the better. That's what's the trouble with him--he's _too_ formal--he doesn't seem to believe in any pleasure, or amusement, or--or----" She couldn't, apparently, think of any third commodity that he didn't believe in. "But I think I'm managing to convert him gradually," she added. "And he's managing to convert you a little at the same time, eh?" She laughed again in the same curious, muffled-up manner. No, she said; Terry was _not_ converting her. Not really. He was only just showing her things that she had already felt or guessed. Bacteriology was a symbol rather than the thing itself. I asked her whose idea it had been first of all, and she answered: "Not _his_, you can be sure." He, in fact, had been anything but keen about it. Perhaps he thought that her presence would make him nervous during his lectures. (Again the curious laugh.) But of course he hadn't any power to prevent her from paying the fee and joining. She went on: "It's rather amusing--the way he treats me. Privately, of course, we're friends. But professionally, as a member of his class, I'm nothing. Not a word or a smile. When he's finished lecturing he picks up his papers and dashes out of the room as if he's afraid somebody might follow him." "Perhaps he is."