Helen and Severn, he replied. And also even I was involved, because of my quarrel with Helen. That had to come to an end. We were all going to be friends again, and he would show Helen that true affection wasn't narrow and personal, but something that—that—something that.... In fact, to put the whole matter a good deal more plainly than he did, everything that was not perfect was to be summarily abolished, and the reign of universal love to begin forthwith. He was once more the eager missionary; the pendulum of his mood had swung again, and it was the future now that he saw, perfectly obliterating the imperfect past.
V
But everything that night that I shall never forget belongs to Mizzi more than to him. I went to see her in blank despondency and told her what had happened; I expected her to be at least as anxious as I was that Terry shouldn't meet Helen. But she wasn't; she merely nodded her head and remarked, at the end of it all: "So I had better reserve for you two berths in the wagon-lit to-night, is it not?"
"Good heavens, no!" I cried, just in time to keep her away from the telephone. And then I asked her if she really supposed that we could go.
She answered: "Well, he's going, isn't he?"
"He says he is. But it seem to me we've got to persuade him out of it."
"Why?"
"Why? Well, can't you see all the hundreds of reasons why?"
"I can see this," she answered quietly, "that he will go, whatever we do or say. Do you remember how—the night before last—I said I wished some fate would send him back to her? ... Well, this is fate."
Her supreme calmness astonished me. I said that whether it was fate or not, his going back could only have the result of turning bad into worse. "Think of it, Mizzi—think of him meeting her for the first time after those awful letters—and preaching to her—that's what it'll amount to—about her duty to her husband! ... She'll feel like killing him."