What could I say or do after that? When I told Mizzi we were going she was both astonished and pleased. "And he suggested it himself?" she said, as she wrote me out the address of a hotel in Pesth. "That iss _so_ good--and you are evidently such a big influence to him." (I think she was wrong there, whatever it was that she meant.) "But, of course, one week--it iss _nothing_. It iss when you are with him in Buda that you must persuade him again.... I think you know how to do it--oh, I am so glad that I sent for you!" So we went on board the paddle-boat at the Praterkai the next morning. It was one of those dim preludes to a hot summer's day, when the sun climbs slowly through opaque mists, and the heat seems first of all to rise up like an exhalation from the earth. As the boat chugged its way downstream the air was deliciously cool and fragrant, and there was something indescribably drowsy in the mist-hung panorama of fields and homesteads. Terry sat with me on the top deck, and during the greater part of the journey I was busy making up my mind about him. I think it was his extraordinary buoyancy that was most disquieting, and that made me realize, in the end, that Mizzi hadn't brought me on a fool's errand. He was _too_ exuberant; _too_ talkative. Again, as on the evening before, the things he said were the things I couldn't have believed he would ever say. He told me, for example (and without being asked), that he had done with women. He liked Mizzi because there was no nonsense about her, because she never tried to "play the woman game" with him. Not that it would affect him if she did, except that he would think less of her. I asked him if he ever heard from Helen, and he replied, almost triumphantly: "Never. Never since that last letter that I didn't answer." I told him that she had taken to spending most of her time out of England, and he interrupted, with his triumph fading into mere excitement: "I don't want to hear about her. I tell you--haven't I already told you?--that I've cut myself adrift from all that part of my life? It's gone--it's almost forgotten--and now, with this far more wonderful happiness, I don't want to have anything to do with it--even in memory...." And he added, unnecessarily, that he had changed during those years that I had not seen him. It was then that I suggested that he should marry Mizzi. Rather to my astonishment he didn't indignantly protest, or even repeat his assurance that he had done with women. He said merely: "It's a hundred to one she wouldn't want me. And, in any case, it seems a pity to interrupt our friendship." He said that sincerely, mind--without the slightest trace of cynicism. V