He said, sombrely: "I _must_ write--but it's true what you say--I ought to have written before--long before--only I was a fool--a coward--I thought I had done with it all...." Back again, inexorably and inevitably, at his own guilt.... VIII Severn agreed with me that he was ill. I had a short but amazing conversation with him as we stood at the bureau counter to settle our respective bills. He began immediately: "Look here, Hilton, has it ever struck you that our friend's not quite himself at times?" "You mean Terry?" "Yes. I don't lay claim to be a mental expert, but I reckon I can see trouble when it's staring me in the face.... It struck me he might have been overworking--I'm told Karelsky's rather a slave-driver--and then with this affair on top of it all.... Of course it's all perfectly stupid and none of his business, but then how can you argue with a man whose eyes keep on telling you that he's trembling on the brink of the beyond? ... That's a fact--I'm not exaggerating. He was like that with me this morning when you left us--I felt I _had_ to humour him, or else he might have gone right off his head there and then.... And, as it happens, it doesn't particularly matter to me whether I go back now or next week, as I had intended." So _that_ was what had happened. Terry _hadn't_ really conquered, and Severn _hadn't_ really given in.... I said: "And when you get to England I suppose you'll carry out your original intentions?" He shrugged his shoulders and replied that he didn't really know what he should do. It all depended on Helen. If she wanted her freedom she'd have to have it. There wasn't much fun in staying with a woman who didn't want you, was there? It was a pity, he said, that there had been this meeting--it would have been far better if we had waited until the sensational news came in the Sunday papers--if it ever did. "You don't suppose I'd do all this without good reasons, do you? The only thing I didn't bargain for was a meeting with a mad missionary. Yes, I mean that. And the trouble is that I like him too much to be able to tell him to go to the devil.... As a matter of fact, the thing's damned serious, by the look of it. What he wants is rest--absolute rest--for weeks and months--otherwise there's going to be a serious smash-up. Know what I mean?" I said I thought I did, and he relapsed into his semi-facetious humour. "Thank heaven," he said, "that Madame presents no problem. Dear, kind creature--she will be delighted to go back to Bukarest for a slightly larger sum than she charged me for bringing her away.... What a pity we cannot settle everything in life by money!" Nothing of all this surprised me. It was plausibility itself compared with the theory that Terry had persuaded Severn by some miracle of eloquence or importunity.