"Neither can he."
"What do you mean? What are the things he can't forgive?"
"The things he has done himself."
"Such as?"
"I don't think I can tell you. As you said just now, I don't know enough about him."
"Is he sorry he ever met me?"
"Maybe," I said hastily, as the entrance of Severn in his wheeled chair put an abrupt end to our conversation. Heaven knows where and how it would have ended but for that.
I didn't understand her. Perhaps I never have understood her; perhaps, if and when this manuscript is finished, she will seem a kind of incomprehensible mystery, without clue or key.... All I can set down are the things that happened, and these, it may be, are not always very significant.... One of them, fortunately, is beyond controversy—the change that took place in her way of life from the moment that she brought her husband to England. It was extraordinary; she became all at once the model wife, avoiding all social engagements and spending most of her time dutifully at home. Severn, if he had been less abnormal in temperament, might have been gratified by the change; as it was, he did his best to persuade her to enjoy herself as usual. But she wouldn't; she would stay and look after him whether he liked it or not. He on his side accepted the novel situation in a spirit of slightly sardonic good-humour. "Women are sadists," he told me once. "They love men most when their bodies are broken and helpless...." And when I suggested that there might be some other motive besides sadism, he retorted laughingly: "Oh, yes, there may be. But I wouldn't take your word for it—you're such a thoroughgoing sentimentalist...."
Sentimentalist or not, I found some of those evenings at the End House almost more poignant than I could bear. They were poignant, if you know what I mean, because Severn wouldn't let them be sad. Never had he been more cheerful; never had his wit shone more brightly; never perhaps in my life had he made me laugh so much. He made Helen laugh, and June too—we all laughed. And then suddenly, there would come a second's silence, and we would glimpse him, as it were, behind and beyond the laughter—a spirit tragically brave, chained to that wheeled chair for life.
Once he gave me a long medical lecture on the injury to his spine. It was, he said, in the opinion of every leading authority save one, entirely and absolutely incurable. The exception was a young and adventurous Chicago surgeon named Hermann. "Unfortunately, Hermann's gone with an expedition to the head waters of the Amazon, and won't be available till next year at the earliest...."