And so on.... For a long time I could get nothing at all out of him except that he had changed his mind and wasn't going. The cleverest subtleties of cross-examination were wasted on him; whenever I thought I had manœuvred him into a corner, he just shook his head and said: "I don't know what there is to argue about. Severn told me I must please myself.... I'm pleasing myself, that's all." Then, as a last and not too scrupulous resort, I tried a method that had sometimes succeeded before; it consisting in pretending to infer from his silences something that I knew he wouldn't like me to infer. I said: "Well, I daresay you have good reasons, whatever they are. Karelsky seems rather a keen business man, and if the terms he offers aren't high enough----" "Karelsky," he sharply interrupted, "had nothing to do with it." "Whether he had or not, you haven't any money of your own, and you obviously can't afford to----" I guessed that would stir him. He protested with sudden indignation: "I tell you it isn't a matter of money at all. Good heavens! do you think I'd let a question of money interfere with--with anything I had thought of doing?" "What _would_ you let interfere, then?" He shook his head. "It's just.... Oh, I can't go--I keep on telling you I can't go.... That's all." "It isn't me you ought to be telling. It's Severn. He doesn't know yet, does he?" "Not yet." "Don't you think he'll be rather disappointed?" "Perhaps. I'm sorry about that.... But all the same, I can't help it. It's nothing to do with him--the reason, I mean.... I can't help it--I shall tell him I can't help it!" So the reason had nothing to do with Severn, and nothing to do with Karelsky. Then who _was_ the person involved? II It took about an hour to extort a few meagre fragments of the truth. Only a few, even then. I talked and questioned, and he answered and sometimes didn't answer, and out of it all, very gradually indeed, there came a very blurred picture of what _might_ have happened that night at the End House.... It was obvious, of course, that Helen had persuaded him not to go, and that he had given her a promise. He even admitted as much in the end, in order that he could entrench himself on the much stronger ground that he had pledged his word and must keep to it. He _wasn't_ going to Vienna, he said again; that was final; and he didn't see what there was to argue about. I answered that there was a great deal to argue about. There was what Severn would think, to begin with. Was he going to tell Severn that he had cancelled the arrangement with Karelsky in order to please Helen?... He replied doggedly, as before, that he couldn't help _what_ Severn thought; he was grateful to him, but gratitude didn't and couldn't mean going anywhere in the world he suggested. Besides, hadn't Severn urged him to please himself?