I think I must have dreamed that Terry and Mizzi were married, for I woke up thinking of it. Even now the memory of that morning comes to me enveloped in the dream of the two of them; somehow it is all bright sunlight--the sunlight on the geraniums in the wooden boxes, the sunlight on Terry's face as I left him sleeping, and the sunlight drenching Mizzi's little office.... "_Morgen_," she said, as I entered, and I told her that Terry was asleep, and that I had come down to have a chat with her, if she wasn't too busy. (I know now almost exactly what I was going to say to her, for I had planned it all very carefully. I was going to talk about Terry--to lead the conversation up to a point at which she might, if she cared, confide in me. I was going to say and do so many clever things, if I had had the chance. But I didn't have the chance.) She said to me suddenly: "What was the train that your friend Mr. Severn travelled by?" I told her; and then she said: "Do you think he would break the journey at all--at Innsbrück, say, or Zürich, or Basle?" "I don't think so. He said he was going to get to England as soon as he could." "And his train is due to arrive in Paris early this morning?" "Yes ... I rather think so." Then she said, very quietly: "I am sorry.... There iss bad news--an accident.... No details yet, but a bad accident--near Paris.... I heard on the telephone just now.... Will you sit down while I ring up again?" CHAPTER SIX I I SAT by the window while she telephoned, and I smoked cigarette after cigarette, and I tried to think--tried to think--tried to think of Paris, and early morning, and what a train-accident would be like, and whether, if Severn.... It was all numbing and bewildering at first; but behind it, amazingly constant, was the thought of Terry.... How would it affect _him_? Somehow I had the feeling that even in a train-accident Severn could be relied on to look after himself. I think I made some sort of stammering remark about the first reports being probably exaggerated; and Mizzi answered, turning her face momentarily away from the instrument: "It may be. We must wait till there is further news. There will be the newspaper soon." We waited. I see now in my mind that crowded little box of a room with the sunlight streaming into it, and the map of Austria-Hungary on the wall, and Mizzi's pale-golden hair shimmering against its background of _Jahrbücher_ and _Wohnungsanzeiger_, and--most important of all--the telephone. The telephone dominated--was no sooner put down than taken up again; its shrill ringing pitched the highest and most excruciating keynote of tension. "Everybody is telephoning," said Mizzi, after she had rung up the _Stunde_ offices. "They do not know much, but it is believed that several Wien people have been killed. Now I will try the railway office."