And so it began. The difficulty is to say _what_ began. Terry told me so little, and Helen told me so much; and between the two was a vast hiatus of the inexplicable. At first, the affair seemed perfectly harmless. When a man, after habitually working three times as hard as he ought, slows down to twice as hard, there doesn't seem a great deal to complain of. Nor when the same man spends a wet Sunday afternoon listening to a pretty woman play Chopin, instead of drenching himself to the skin on some miserable hillside. The whole thing is difficult to put into words because to this day I don't really know what happened. All I surmise is that the work of mutual conversion proceeded during the months of late winter and early spring--she attending his bacteriology lectures and he accompanying her to theatres, pianoforte recitals, and so on. Their meetings were frequent enough to stir gossip, no doubt, but hardly scandal, especially as it was so obvious that Severn knew and approved. Helen had always been in the throes of some fad or other, and he probably assumed that Terry was an unusually congenial successor of Christian Science, Dalcroze eurhythmics, highbrow drama, and a dozen other enthusiasms that had had their day and one by one crept silently to rest. It was he, more often than not, who might say to her: "Oh, by the way, I've got a card for Wolferton's private view--it's next Tuesday at the Savile Galleries. I shan't have time to go myself, but you might take Terry and show him the latest painted pot-boilers...." And she would take him, of course. When I asked him if he had enjoyed going to that or some similar function, he would usually reply: "Yes, very much." Never more, and hardly ever less. It was Helen who assured me that the work of "humanizing" him was proceeding successfully. "And," I said to her once, "you're still in love with him?" She replied: "More than ever. Oh, _much_ more. And--as I told you before--it's _wonderful_." "Maybe, but is it wise?" She pursed her lips and then answered: "Well, what harm can there be in it? It isn't sharing anything with Geoffrey.... It's nothing to do with anybody how I feel--nobody will ever know it except you, and you wouldn't if I hadn't told you." "Suppose Terry were to find it out?" "You mean--suppose I'm a fool, eh? ... Well, I assure you, I'm not." "All right, then--take another supposition. What will happen if Terry falls in love with you?" "My dear Jimmy--he _couldn't_. It wouldn't occur to him. Oh, don't--don't--" she was beginning to laugh--"don't imagine it. It _couldn't_ happen." "Then what _will_ happen--eventually?" She gave me her loveliest smile. "I shall teach him and watch over him, and then, when the right girl comes along, I shall just hand him over ... in good condition." "And when do you think that will be?"