"Yes," Helen replied.
"And father and mother, too. Tell them quick—and Peter and Bricktop and Helen—everybody!"
"Yes. I will go instantly."
She should have thought of this before, she said to herself, as she hurried away on her mission.
Henriette was left alone with Phil. She regarded him with lashes half-closed and with her lips set in a way much like Madame Ribot's. As she grew older she would more and more resemble her mother. A step and another, slowly, gracefully, as she bent her lithe figure, her eyes opening now in venturesome inquiry as she took the place which Helen had just vacated. She had written on his arm a good deal of late and, fascinated by the accomplishment, had even practised on her own arm in her room. Phil received the hand-clasp which signalled Helen's return.
"A messenger has gone," she wrote. "Wouldn't you like to take a walk in the court?"
"Yes," was the answer. "It will make the happiness still more real to feel my legs under me."
She directed his steps as Helen had directed them many times. The men of pain lounging in the court looking out through the holes in balls of white, watched two figures pacing in rhythmic step which was familiar when their backs were turned; but when facing them, the girl who was like a picture was in place of the picture girl. They wondered about it; wonder was a habit of their tired minds. She was beautiful, surpassingly so, soothing to the eyes, and she played Helen's part, too, by smiling at them as she passed. Her smile was more radiant than Helen's. It was a better short-acquaintance smile, one of them thought, while Helen's sent a warming, lasting glow all through you and was better for easing pain. Of the two, they would rather have Helen about every day. The men of pain were not articulate, but little that passed in the court escaped their eyes. If a sparrow lighted on a roof or a nurse appeared at a window, they knew it.
Then, just as Phil and Henriette had made a turn with their backs to them, they saw Helen appear under the sign and something happened that puzzled pain-weary heads. At the very point where the court was in view the picture girl stopped short at the sight of the two who were promenading. For an instant she was perfectly still, only an instant, as she looked at the backs of Phil and the girl who was like a picture. Then she put her hand up to her head abruptly, as one will who recollects something, and turned away before the two had wheeled to walk back toward the Oral Surgery sign.
It was a pantomime that set the men into a prolonged quandary. Some had an idea, from the way that Helen put her hand up to her head, that there had been a flash of pain as sharp as any they had ever known through it; others thought that she was relieved to find another in her place. Perhaps both were right, and all kept thinking of it after Phil and Henriette had gone indoors.