The night had a glow of moonlight, and in it her eyes were shining—with delight, as I said, but also (I wondered) with something more than delight? I could even see her mother in her then—her mother as she had been years before.
Terry and I, having bidden our farewells, walked back down the moonlit lane to the Tube Station. He was staying with me for the night—indeed, for just as long as he wished, though the thought of his unfinished work made him eager to return to Hindhead.
He said, amidst the clatter of the Tube train, that Severn, despite the accident, was really just the same, but that Helen seemed to have changed. "I didn't understand her," he confessed.
I answered that eight years were bound to have made a difference, and that the last year had made perhaps the biggest difference of all. He nodded then, and was silent for a while. It was obvious that talking about her both attracted him and made him embarrassed.
He never mentioned now his old half-crazed idea, that he was personally responsible for all the misfortunes of the Severn family. But the idea was somewhere still in his mind, in essence the same though maybe transmuted into another semblance; and I could sense it easily enough behind the slow, baffled words with which he broke the silence eventually. "I'm more than ever sorry for her now," he told me.
That was all he said about her, but before going to bed we talked for hours about his work and prospects. He told me frankly that one of the chief causes of his earlier despondency had been the thought, which he never dared to express in words, that his work was no good. Karelsky's shabby financial dealings with him had increased that fear; he had begun to sink beneath the awful realization that he was a failure. It wasn't any spectacular success that he wanted; he had no envy of those who made their names prominent in the world's view. All he wanted was the secret inward conviction that he was doing something worth doing. And now he had it.
"All this may sound priggish," he added, "but I don't think it really is priggish. Because, after all. I'm only choosing the easiest path for myself. I should hate Karelsky's life of fame and sensation, just as he'd hate my life of hard work and insignificance.... We're just made differently, that's all, and we can't help ourselves."
"All the same," I said, "you ought to have what you're entitled to, if only to stop others from having more than they're entitled to. You've done the work; you ought to get the credit."
"Can't you see that it doesn't matter who gets the credit?"
"Frankly," I retorted, "I'm incapable of feeling like that about it. If there's any fame or credit to be got out of my work, I'll be glad to have it. It may be a lower attitude than yours, but it's more appropriate for earning a living in the twentieth century."