He laughed again. "I don't suppose you do," he said, "especially as I haven't been altogether truthful with you about Madame. She doesn't dance—except very badly in a ball-room. Her profession is far better suited to her temperament and attainments.... Understand?"
IV
We understood. He had told us practically everything, and what little he hadn't told us we could guess. Never had the whole interview seemed more pointless than at the end of his explanations; there was simply nothing to be done or said. Except—and it was a slight exception—the matter of Bentley. Severn, most probably, had no idea that he had been seen by anyone who knew him besides ourselves, and I let him know as plainly as I could that whether Helen chose to divorce him or not, his adventures were very likely to trickle across to England through the medium of Bentley's chatter. "And then," I said, "you know as well as I do what will happen."
"Of course," he answered, almost carelessly. "It will mean the end of my political career—perhaps even the end of my legal career as well, though I rather doubt that. But, anyhow, do you think I haven't counted the cost?" His voice became eager as he went on: "My dear fellow, I've counted all the costs, and my favourite maxim still holds—I'll do what I want to do. I've climbed the ladder because I've enjoyed climbing it, but if the price of staying on top is too high, then damn it all, I'll come down again.... I'll take risks—I'll live dangerously—I'll do any damned thing in the world except be a slave—even to my career!"
Deadlock—complete and absolute. He had his reasons for everything, and most of what he said, whether it convinced or not, was logically unanswerable. I was tired of the whole business, and Terry's silence seemed to show that he was the same. The one thing desirable was to get him away from the brain-twisting intricacies of a situation which had nothing to do with him.
But just then he spoke. He turned to me and asked me very calmly if I would mind if he and Severn were to speak alone for a few minutes. And before I could reply he went on: "Wait for me—in the hall. I won't be long.... And you might—if there's time—look up the return trains to Vienna...."
V
If there were time! There was almost time to memorize the whole time-table while I waited for him. I sat in the coolest corner of the hall and tried to interest myself in a month-old copy of Lustige Blätter—the only non-Magyar newspaper on the premises. But it was difficult—as difficult as it is to appreciate the comic papers in a dentist's waiting-room. When a quarter of an hour passed and Terry didn't return, I began to reproach myself with having left him at all; and then, as a relief from that, I tried to analyse, in the perspective of seven years, that early episode with Helen that had so vitally affected his life. What, exactly, had happened between the two of them? ...
The clock chiming the hour drove me back again from past to present. There seemed something ominous in his non-appearance—a hint of something terrible that might be happening behind the screened door of the lounge. What might not such a man as Severn do with such a man as Terry? ... The minutes drew towards the half-hour, and I think I should have boldly walked into the lounge when the clock struck, had not Terry, a minute earlier, come out to me—alone. His face was paler than ever, and his eyes—his eyes were just what I didn't like to see. It angered me to think of the strain that all this incessant listening and thinking and arguing was putting on him; it gave me a furious, unreasoning anger with Severn and Helen and Terry himself and the world in general.
His first words were an eager, disjointed apology for having kept me waiting longer than he had intended; and I replied, with perhaps a touch of curtness: "There's a fast train to Vienna at four this afternoon. Shall we go back?"