He coughed and cleared his throat. "The operation--if there was to have been one at all--ought to have been performed immediately after the accident. That is my opinion." She bore it well, though she didn't--for the moment--realize all that his words implied. "But still," she whispered, "even now...." "Now, I am vurry sorry to say, is too late." "Too late! _Too late_?" She was realizing a little--just a little. "You mean that you're not even going to _try_?" "To try, Mrs. Severn, when there is no chance at all, would be plain murder." "_No chance at all_!" "I'm afraid not." We stood round her chair, and though she didn't faint or do anything like that, we could see that her mind and everything personal in her had flown far away from that sunlit garden. Hermann, in his odd jarring manner, was bubbling with sympathy; he doubtless considered her emotion perfectly natural in the circumstances. "A vurry sad case," he muttered to me. "Vurry sad indeed. She's a brave woman--she'll get over it.... But at first--after having hoped so much.... By the way, I didn't tell Severn. Thought it best not to.... _Her_ job, that is--or yours--do it better than an outsider...." I nodded. "Will he always be the same?" I whispered. "Always. Not the ghost of a chance of anything else. Never was.... Don't know how anybody calling himself a specialist could have made a mistake about it." "He'll live, I suppose?" "_Live_?" He put his soft flabby hand over my wrist in a way intended to be encouraging. "My dear sir, there's no need to be _too_ despondent. With luck he'll live as long as you or me--maybe longer." IX After Hermann had gone, we went in--Helen and I--to see Severn. To _tell_ him.... That which might have been the hardest thing in the world proved, after all, to be the easiest. He was reading when we entered, and as soon as he saw us he began: "I say, he's told you! I wondered if he would. I suppose he thought you'd break it gently to me...." "You know!" I gasped. "_Know_? I should know by your faces, anyhow. But as a matter of fact, I knew as soon as he'd finished prodding me in the back. Knew by the way he changed the subject when I questioned him. Knew by everything he said and looked.... Lawyers get used to reading faces." He went on: "Don't look so terrible about it! ... After all, what the Law will lose, Literature will gain.... By the way, my book on Disraeli comes out next week. Give me a good review, won't you, Hilton? Something wistful and pathetic--in your own inimitable style. A sob in every line. Short paragraph about Disraeli. Column and a half about me. You know the sort of thing?" I stammered something--Heaven knows what--and he asked me to reach a half-opened parcel that was on his table. "Advance copies," he said. "Give me one of them, will you? And my fountain-pen."