"I can't see him, I can't!" she exclaimed. "You must get me out of it! I never want to speak to him again!"
She turned to the door opening onto the stairway and ran through it, leaving Helen looking after her in doubt as to what it all meant.
Von Eichborn, having formed the habit in a month of war of walking into chateaux without formality, waiting no longer for Henriette to come into the hall, entered the sitting-room. Helen's back was turned to him and he easily mistook her figure for Henriette's.
"I accepted the invitation from the window, which I found very charming," he said, "though from your present attitude I might be led to think that I am not welcome."
Rather slowly Helen turned, possibly in a certain cynical anticipation of his visible surprise when he saw her face instead of the one which had led him, an aide, to absent himself from the General's side. Even that martial self-possession of a darling of Berlin drawing-rooms was temporarily thrown off its balance.
"Oh!" gasped von Eichborn.
"Yes," said Helen, thoughtfully looking him over with a lift of her chin, "I'm Henriette's sister." Inwardly she was "fighting mad," but her eyes were coldly staring.
"Your voices are alike, but you do not look alike," von Eichborn managed to say. He screwed his eyeglass into his eye.
"Really! You have quick perceptions!" she remarked.
Von Eichborn dropped his eyeglass and flicked his gloves, which he was carrying in his hand, against the table.