That altered everything. He staggered into Mizzi's office reading the headlines incredulously, and I left him there, believing that she would manage things better than I could. He didn't write to Helen after all. He tried to, afterwards; but when, towards dusk, the news came through that Severn was among the seriously injured, he gave it up in despair. It was hopeless; there were no words in his vocabulary to cope with this new and more terrible situation--no words except the words he kept uttering to me in eager, half-frightened gasps. "She _must_ help him now, Hilton--she _must_ stay with him and help him now--oh, she _must_--she _must_--she couldn't do anything else.... She couldn't leave him now, could she?" He spoke almost as if he were pleading with himself to try to believe in the essential goodness of her. "He's never needed her before, but he'll need her now, and she'll realize it--she's bound to, isn't she? ..." And then, like the bursting of a dark cloud, came the inevitable--the feeling, deeper and blacker than ever, that _he_ was responsible for all that had happened, and especially for all that had happened to Severn. "_I_ made him go by that train--you remember? He wanted to go to Ronacher's and wait till the morning train--but I told him to keep to his promise--you remember that? _I_ made him go--all this would never have happened to him but for me.... You can see how it is, can't you?" I was almost impressed myself by the horror of the coincidence, though I took care not to let Terry see it. I told him briskly that it was absurd for him to feel responsible, and that to anybody except himself the idea would appear ridiculous. Severn would be the first to say so. He buried his head in his hands and was silent. My assurances hadn't helped him. It didn't matter to him what anybody else in the world said or thought. It didn't matter what Severn said or thought. It was he himself who held himself responsible. He was his own accuser. It really seemed to him, in that moment of obsessing guilt, that he had encompassed the ruin entirely by his own tragic efforts--that even, in some dreadfully obscure way, the whole accident, and all its results, lay to his charge. That, of course, was madness; and I think he saw it just in time. He went to his desk and tried again--pitiably, frenziedly--to write to Helen; but everything was wordless, voiceless; there was nothing--_nothing_ that he could put down. I said, with an attempt to comfort him, that Helen would almost certainly help Severn all she could; but he answered: "I don't want her just to _help_ him. I want her to _want_ to help him--I want her to"--he faced me with eyes like swords and added: "I can't tell you what I mean, but I _know_ I could tell her."