"Of course he wouldn't," I answered. "But it was rather decent of Geoffrey to make the suggestion." "Was it?" She spoke rather sadly. "I suppose it was. But at the time, it just made me feel that the whole world was hopeless." She meant, she explained, that it hurt her to think that what meant so much to Terry could be bestowed by Geoffrey as a mere whim of the moment. "But there it is," she went on, enjoying her éclair, "Terry's happy, and I'm happy, and Geoffrey's happy, so I suppose it's all right. Being in love--even tremendously in love--seems to be quite a harmless luxury if you keep your head about it. And I'm not likely to lose mine.... Besides, I want to help Terry. I want to make him a little more at home in the world." "Which is happening faster," I asked, "your conversion of him, or his of you?" She didn't answer. There wasn't time, for at that moment we saw Terry coming towards us. VI He was very shy and nervous. He had decided at the last moment to accept her invitation, but he hadn't known where Rumpelmayer's was, and several bus-conductors had failed to give adequate information. (I think he expected something about as large as Selfridge's.) Anyhow, that accounted for the delay. He was sorry, and he hoped we hadn't been waiting long. The awkward part of it was that I had to leave them almost immediately for an unpostponable duty in Fleet Street. It was unfortunate, I thought, because Helen might think I had invented the appointment in order to leave her alone with Terry. Perhaps she did; but at any rate she seemed not to care. "I hope you won't be late," she said, smiling as she shook hands with me. And then she summoned the waitress and gave a fresh order. As I rode back on the top of a bus to Fleet Street, the whole interview seemed almost incredible. It was queer enough to find Terry breaking his cast-iron rules by having tea with her; but it was positively sensational for her to have calmly confessed to being in love with him, and for me to have comforted her with the assurance that being in love wasn't frightfully important. But that was the sort of thing she had power to do; she could have confessed murder, I believe, and have made you feel that murder wasn't frightfully important. Often since then I have pondered over the matter and wondered what I _ought_ to have done. Whatever it was, it was probably more heroic than what I did, which was merely to wait, telling myself over and over again that neither the one nor the other of them was a fool, and that there were certain things which only fools did.... VII