The afternoon wore on as under a spell wrought unconsciously for him with the beauty of Henriette before him and a certain magnetic force at his elbow—which suddenly snapped as Helen said:
"I don't know—probably I'll never do it any better! Thank you!"
By this he understood that the drawing was finished. He rose as one will when the end of an incident impels physical release.
"Enough for to-day!" said Henriette, a touch of sharpness in her voice as she rose, too.
Helen looked exhausted and numb. She had put all her vitality into a sheet of cardboard.
"You, too, Henriette!" exclaimed Phil, as he looked at the result.
At the bottom of the drawing of Henriette, with arm uplifted as about to lay brush to canvas, and of himself in the pose which Helen had arranged, was scrawled, "Seventeenth cousins." Both Henriette and Phil flushed, and Helen looked from one face to the other lingeringly, keenly. She had caught the grace and charm of her sister as something inviting, vivid and finished as art itself, and the note of the man was of a downright simplicity of clear profile which seemed to see nothing except the face before him.
"You think it bad!" said Helen. "It is—it is! But I warned you that I can't do anything but put the person as I see him into line."
In the resulting impulse, which had a certain desperation about it, she grasped the edge of the cardboard in both hands to tear it in two.
"No!" said Henriette peremptorily. "I never liked anything you have done better."