He did not like to part with their companionship in the faint starlight this last evening at Mervaux.
"You will go straight to America?" Henriette asked, as they started toward the house.
"I think so, if I can catch a steamer. I imagine that not one-tenth of the homeward rush has been accommodated yet."
Not until they reached the door did the three unlink arms. Helen, blinking into the lamplight of the hall, bent her head. She was swallowing as if she would try her voice before she said "Good-night!" with the faintest smile, as for an instant her eyes looked into his and he saw something that reminded him of the brilliancy and fearlessness that had shone when she rose from the ground after the shell-burst, but now veiled.
Henriette paused and, as the door closed behind Helen, held out her hand to say her own good-night. After looking into Helen's eyes he was looking into Henriette's, which had the wondering gratitude of the moment when he had laid her on the turf in the gully, and her smile, as her eyelashes flickered, added the touch of exquisite charm to her appealing beauty. Involuntarily in answer to it he drew her hand toward him.
"Henriette!"
She turned her head, her profile with parted lips toward him, and her cheek so near that impulse pressed his lips to it. At this she drew away, not quickly but steadily, looking back into his eyes, and after a tightening of her fingers drew them free. Then in a flutter, her own eyes luminous with surprise, she precipitately turned toward the door. In her room, smiling into her mirror which smiled back, she was pleased with the way the thing had been done; but to Phil her figure, as it passed through the doorway, became unaccountably the figure of Helen.