"I don't know what we should have done if you had not been here," she said.
"At least, I kept you in the cellar! Are you glad that you came?" he asked.
"I would not have missed it for worlds!" answered Henriette. "And I owe it to you."
"No, to Helen. But for her we should have been in Paris."
"Yes, that's true," she replied thoughtfully. "And what would have become of her if we had not come?"
"Gone on sketching until a shell hit her, I should say."
"Or until she saw a wounded man and fainted! But there is something that I do owe to you and to you alone," Henriette went on softly. "I am appalled when I think of it—of the obligation. I—well——" now one of her trickling, enchanting laughs. "There's the portrait to repay you! I think that we might have a sitting in the morning."
Here a white figure appeared around the corner of the path, and they were face to face with Helen. She drew back in the embarrassment of one conscious of more than a mere inadvertent intrusion.
"I was going to look at the gun-fire for a minute," she said. It might have been Henriette's voice suddenly changing the subject. She had on the simple gown whose cut was the same as Henriette's, who had dressed for dinner that evening with her usual care. Something in Helen's distraitness, a sense of her loneliness, aroused an impulse in Phil.
"Make it three!" said he. He went to her, took her hand and drew her arm into his. She seemed to resist slightly and then to yield almost tremblingly. Henriette also slipped her arm into his.