When I look back on those years, I see Severn most clearly of all in his surroundings at White's. It is as if all the memories of meeting him there were laid one on top of another to form a composite picture of a single typical meeting. There were sherry, oysters, port, coffee, cigars, and talk. The talk was always brilliant and the port was always strong. Nothing very much was ever said about Helen, but Severn's attitude to me was so cordial that I knew he must think her's rather absurd. Sometimes he would tell me that she hadn't been well and that she had gone abroad to recuperate. She must have been out of England a very large proportion of those five years. I seem to remember asking the question, "How's Helen?" and receiving always the answer: "Oh, she's at Ostend...." (Or Etretat, Cannes, Biarritz, Palm Beach, or wherever it was.) June, meanwhile, was at her boarding-school, and later on, at Newnham. I met her only once, during a summer vacation; she had grown up into a normal, healthy, sport-loving youngster with freckled cheeks and just a touch of her mother's prettiness. She talked about nothing but tennis. XIV And so the gap (if it is a gap) is bridged, and at the further side of it there stands out in my memory a bright June day with the breeze from the river rushing up Bouverie Street and the sunlight glinting in the distance on the cross of St. Paul's. I had lunched at the _Cheshire Cheese_, and when I returned to the _Messenger_ office the 'phone boy told me that my man Roebuck (whom, to be quite accurate, I shared with two other tenants) had been trying to get me on the telephone. I rang him up immediately and heard, without the least surprise, that a telegram had arrived for me at my rooms. But then he said: "It's signed 'Mizzi'" (he pronounced it to rhyme with "dizzy") "and it comes from Vienna, sir. And it says, 'Please come immediately Terrington ill'...." It took me seconds--perhaps moments--to realize what it meant. "Shall I pack your things, sir?" I was too dazed to make a decision just then. I said I would get home early and discuss the matter. XV In the end, of course, I _did_ go. There was never really any doubt about it, when once my mind had grasped the situation. Mizzi was the very last person who would be likely to send for me without reason. Fortunately my editor was able to grant me the necessary vague leave of absence. I rang up Severn at his chambers, thinking to talk over the matter with him, but his man informed me that he was out of town. Thus, once again, the boat-train from Victoria, the Channel crossing, the dash across Paris from the Gare St. Lazare to the Gare de l'Est, the terrific crawl through the Arlberg, and then, in the sun of early morning, Vienna, with the sky like a blue enamel bowl, and the temperature soaring already. CHAPTER FOUR I