"P.S. Won't you send a photograph of yourself? One of the magazines which is making a special article on your work wants it. Perhaps you have something which some friend has drawn of you; or, better, which you have done of yourself."
The letter pointed the way; it threw out the bridge on the other side of the promised land.
"And a picture of myself!" she thought, when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. "No, I'll not send that." They would have to see her, though, and they would say in America, as everywhere else, How plain she is!
"I don't have to exhibit my face, though!" she declared defiantly. "I needn't meet people except those who have to do with my work."
Those unfinished sketches which she took out of her trunk for examination still seemed to have been done by another hand. She had lost her zest. The world wanted her drawings and she was not caring whether or not she ever made another one—that was the truth of her mood to-night. But she thought of herself as tired. A long walk after dinner and a good sleep would clear the cobwebs out of her mind. Yet she was looking out of her window at the stars after midnight and saw the sun-up after a restless night.
Once in America she would begin afresh; all her old verve and love of art would return. She could not start too soon. Leave to go to Paris, first! Bricktop could arrange this and meanwhile she could get her discharge from the hospital. She would go—go! She could not wait another day.
"Well, soon I'll have his harness off and then Phil can speak," said Bricktop, who had a slack half-hour and was in a talking mood, which meant that you had to follow his lead or rather trail on his swell like a small boat in tow of a fast cruiser. "And let me tell you that if he hadn't had a good constitution and a nerve of steel there wouldn't have been a chance. Another thing—you! You gave the inspiration to his will that kept the blood going out into the veins of all that tissue that had to wait to be fitted into its place. Why, you and I, Helen, have done a stunt that makes me wonder if the good Lord did not give a special dispensation to my clumsy old fingers in this case!"
She had heard this before. It helped her now and it hurt, too, as she listened, trying to smile.
"And he——"
"Yes, while I get my breath you may put in a word edgewise," continued Bricktop, with a gesture of amused condescension.