"It's easy enough to steal credit," said Severn.
"Credit? Yes, but who wants that? I should hate all this newspaper puffing—it would worry me. It's just as well Karelsky's saved me from it. If he'd asked me I'd have given him full permission to do all he has done.... And besides, do I deserve credit? I'd done all that work, and yet I hadn't enough confidence in it or myself to make it public. The world owes something to Karelsky."
"And you may be sure Karelsky will collect the debt in full," replied Severn.
Then June said laughingly: "Do you know, Terry, father had a wonderful idea that you should bring an action against Karelsky for theft or plagiarism, or whatever it is, and that he—father, I mean—would take up your case in court? It would have been rather fine, wouldn't it?"
"So fine," interposed Severn, "that the very ushers would have wept at my eloquence."
Perhaps it was as well to make a joke of it like that. June and her father were in some strange and mystic harmony—I had never been so certain of it as then. They laughed and chattered and made witticisms, and all the time Terry was growing younger and happier before their eyes. The Karelsky business didn't really matter; you had only to look at him to see that. "It's what's done in the world that matters, not who does it," was his way of summing it all up.
It was a happy ending—for all of us except Helen. She stayed, pale and silent, for a while, and then suddenly whispered something to Severn and went out of the room. He told us afterwards, with perhaps the faintest touch of cynicism, that she had begged to be excused owing to a bad headache.
And the conversation went on....
IV
June's eyes as she shook hands with me at the gate that evening were shining with delight. "It's marvellous," she whispered softly, for Terry wasn't far away. "It's wonderful to think that he knows everything now, and that we have nothing more to fear...."