"_We_ should be happy." She added, with a new note in her voice: "Think of it--in all my life the happiest moments have been with Terry, and in all his life the happiest moments have been with me.... And yet you ask me such questions!" She laid her hand gently on my arm as she went on: "Don't be angry with me for what I'm going to do. If it's wrong, then I choose to do wrong--deliberately and with my eyes open. We all have that right, haven't we?" "It's a terrible right." "Yes, I know. But don't preach--I'm past all that." "I'm not preaching. It's just that I think it's such a frightful mistake from your own point of view." "No, no...." "Helen--don't you see?--Don't you see how _impossible_ it is--how _utterly_ impossible ...?" "I know that I _can_ do it ... and I _will_ do it...." * * * * * * * * The sunlit lawn, and the blue sky over it, and the End House there behind the foliage of the giant elms. Someone came out of the house through the conservatories, walked briskly under the trees, and then across the broad belt of sunlight. Small of stature, rather fat, and utterly unlike an explorer to the head waters of the Amazon, he blinked owlishly as he stepped into the shadow near us.... Mr. Hermann, of Chicago. Helen introduced us, and the man touched my hand--just touched it--with those fat clammy fingers of his--maybe the most valuable fingers in the world, anyhow. He was vurry glad to make my acquaintance.... And then, to Helen: "Can I have a few words with you, Mrs. Severn?" "_Now_?" She had obviously assumed that he had come merely to say good-bye. "_If_ convenient." She told him he might speak freely before me, and I wished she hadn't. Somehow I felt I wanted to get away, to walk by myself along the Spaniards Road and think over all that she and I had said; Mr. Hermann, of Chicago--(I will admit it)--jarred on me. Then I heard him telling her that he was afraid what he had to say wasn't vurry good news.... No--she needn't alarm herself--he had just left her husband in the vurry best of health, having regard to the circumstances. It wasn't that.... "Please tell me," she said calmly. He looked at her as if he approved and admired her directness. And he told her. I shall never forget the way her face turned ashen white as she listened; she seemed, too, in that short space of minutes, to grow years older.... He had made a careful examination of her husband, he began. It was a most complicated case, and he wouldn't use any technical language; but, to be perfectly candid, the matter was altogether different from what he had been led to expect. "You see, Mrs. Severn, how it is? Your husband's trouble is not what I thought--is not what he thought, either." "It is more serious?" she said, still calmly. "Oh, no. Not exactly _more_ serious. Just different." "Well?"