"No chance at all!"
"I'm afraid not."
We stood round her chair, and though she didn't faint or do anything like that, we could see that her mind and everything personal in her had flown far away from that sunlit garden. Hermann, in his odd jarring manner, was bubbling with sympathy; he doubtless considered her emotion perfectly natural in the circumstances. "A vurry sad case," he muttered to me. "Vurry sad indeed. She's a brave woman—she'll get over it.... But at first—after having hoped so much.... By the way, I didn't tell Severn. Thought it best not to.... Her job, that is—or yours—do it better than an outsider...."
I nodded. "Will he always be the same?" I whispered.
"Always. Not the ghost of a chance of anything else. Never was.... Don't know how anybody calling himself a specialist could have made a mistake about it."
"He'll live, I suppose?"
"Live?" He put his soft flabby hand over my wrist in a way intended to be encouraging. "My dear sir, there's no need to be too despondent. With luck he'll live as long as you or me—maybe longer."
IX
After Hermann had gone, we went in—Helen and I—to see Severn. To tell him....
That which might have been the hardest thing in the world proved, after all, to be the easiest. He was reading when we entered, and as soon as he saw us he began: "I say, he's told you! I wondered if he would. I suppose he thought you'd break it gently to me...."